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OUTLINES 



ENGLISH LITERATURE. 



BY 

THOMAS B. SHAW, B.A., 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE IMPERIAL ALEXANDER LYCEUM 
OF ST. PETERSBURG. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
LEA AND BLANCHARD. 

1849. 



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l-HlI.ADELFHtA: 
T. K. AND P. a. COLLINS, TEIMIERS. 



TO THE HEADER. 



The author of the following pages has been engaged, dur- 
ing some years, as Professor of English Literature in the Im- 
perial Alexander Lyceum of St. Petersburg; and, both in the 
discharge of his duties there and in his private teaching, he 
has very frequently felt the want of a Manual, concise but 
comprehensive, on the subject of his lectures. The plan 
generally adopted in foreign countries, of allowing the pupil 
to copy the lecturer's manuscript notes, was in this case 
found to be impracticable ; and the often-repeated request of 
the students to be furnished with some elementary book, as 
a framework or skeleton of the course, could only be met by 
a declaration, singular as the fact might appear, that no such 
work, cheap, compendious, and tolerably readable, existed 
in English. The excellent volumes of Warton are obviously 
inapplicable to such a purpose ; for they only treat of one por- 
tion of English literature — the poetry ; and of that only down 
to the Elizabethan age. Their plan, also, is far too exten- 
sive to render them useful to the general student. Cham- 
bers's valuable and complete 'Cyclopaedia of English Litera- 
ture' is as much too voluminous as his shorter sketch is too 
dry and list-like ; while the French and German essays on 
the subject are not only limited in their scope, but are full of 
very erroneous critical judgments. 

Induced by these circumstances, the author has endea- 



TO THE READER. 



voured to produce a volume which might serve as a useful 
outline Introduction to English Literature both to the English 
and the foreign student. This little work, it is needless to 
say, has no pretensions whatsoever to the title of a conjplete 
Course of English Literature : it is merely an attempt to de- 
scribe the causes, instruments, and nature of those great 
revolutions in taste which form what are termed "Schools of 
Writing." In order to do this, and to mark more especially 
those broad and salient features which ought to be clearly 
fixed in the reader's mind before he can profitably enter upon 
the details of the subject, only the greater n^imes — the greater 
types of each period — have been examined ; whilst the infe- 
rior, or merely imitative, writers have been unscrupulously 
neglected : in short, the author has marked only the chief 
luminaries in each intellectual constellation ; he has not 
attempted to give a complete Catalogue of Stars. 

This method appears to unite the advantages of concise- 
ness and completeness; for, should the reader push his stu- 
dies no farther, he may at least form clear ideas of the main 
boundaries and divisions of English literature ; whilst the 
frequent change of topic will, the author trusts, render these 
pages much less tiresome and monotonous than a regular 
systematic treatise. 

He has considered the greater names in English literature 
under a double point of view : first, as glorified types and 
noble expressions of the religious, social, and intellectual 
physiognomy of their times; and secondly, in their own indi- 
viduality : and he hopes that the sketches of the great Baco- 
nian revolution in philosophy, of the state of the Drama under 
Elizabeth and James the First, of the intellectual character 
of the Commonwealth and Restoration, of the romantic school 
of fiction, of Byronism, and of the present tendencies of 
poetry, may be found — however imperfectly executed — to 
possess some interest, were it only as the first attempt to 
treat, in a popular manner, questions hitherto neglected in 



TO THE READER. V 

elementary books, but which the increased intelligence of the 
present age renders it no longer expedient to pass over with- 
out remark. 

The work was written in the brief intervals of very active 
and laborious duties, and in a country where the author 
could have no access to an English library of reference: 
whatever errors and oversights it may contain on minor points 
will, therefore, he trusts, be excused. The only merits to 
which it can have any claim are somewhat of novelty in its 
plan, and the attempt to render it as little dry — as readable, 
in short — as was consistent with accuracy and comprehen- 
siveness. 

It is proposed that this volume shall be followed by a 
second, nearly similar in bulk, and divided into the same 
number of chapters, containing a selection of choice passages 
from the writers treated of in these pages, and forming a 
Chrestomathia to be read with the biographical and critical 
account of each author. The student will, therefore, at once 
have before him a distinct view of the literary character and 
genius of each great writer, and striking extracts from that 
writer's works; he will thus be insensibly led, not only to 
form his taste and fill his memory with beautiful images and 
thoughts, but to acquire a clearer notion of the peculiar me- 
rits of each author than he could obtain from the meagre 
and unconnected fragments to be found in the existing col- 
lections of English prose and verse. 

London, August lOth, 1847, 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 

Page 
Britons — Their Oriental Origin — Cajsar's Invasion, B.C. 60 — Traces of the 
Celtic Speech in Britain — Analysis of English — Saxon Tongue — Disuse 
of Saxon Inflections — The English TA — The English W — Pronunciation — 
Latin Element — Origin of English Language — Norman Conquest — William 
the Conqueror — Monasteries — Twelfth Century — Saxon Chronicle — Nor- 
man French — Layamon — Thirteenth Century — Robert of Gloucester — 
Neologism — Fourteenth Century — Mannyng — WicklifFe and Chaucer — 
Gower — Hermit of Hampole — Pleadings in English — Trevisa, Translation 
of Higden — Mandeville — Fifteenth Century — Lydgate — Statutes in En- 
glish — Sixteenth Century — Reformation — Cheke — Skelton — Surrey and 
Wyatt — Berners — Ascham — Spenser, Chaucerism — Euphuism — Seven- 
teenth Century — Protectorate — Gallicism — Restoration — Eighteenth Cen- 
tury — Proportion of Saxon in English -.__.. 14 



CHAPTER H. 

CHAUCER AND HIS TIMES. 

Age of Chaucer — His Birth and Education — Translation in the Fourteenth 
Century — His Early Productions — His Career — Imbued with Provencal 
Literature — Character of his Poems — Romaunt of the Rose — Troilus and 
Cresseide — Anachronism — House of Fame — Canterbury Tales — Plan of 
the Work — The Pilgrims — Proposition of the Host — Plan of the Deca- 
meron — Superiority of Chaucer's Plan — Dialogue of the Pilgrims — 
Knight's Tale — Squire's Tale — Story of Griselda— Comic Tales — The 
two Prose Tales — Rime of Sir Thopas — Parson's Tale — Language of 
Chaucer — The Flower and the Leaf --.... 34 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER III. 

SIDNEY AND SPENSER. 



Page 
Elizabetlmn Era — Ages of Pericles, Augustus, the Medici, Louis XIV. — 
Chivalry— Sidney— His Arcadia— His Style— Spenser— Shepherd's Calen- 
dar — Pastoral — Spenser at Court — Burleigh and Leicester — Spenser's 
Settlement in Ireland— The Faery Queen— His death— Criticism on the 
Faery Queen — Style, Language, and Versification - - - . 54 



CHAPTER IV. 



BACON. 

His Birtli and Education— View of the State of Europe— His Career— Im- 
peached for Corruption— His Death— His Character— State of Philosophy 
in the Sixteenth Century— Its Corruptions and Defects— Bacon's System— 
Not a Discoverer— The New Philosophy— Analysis of the Instauratio: 
I. De Augmentis ; II. Novum Organum ; III. Sylva Sylvarum ; IV. Scala 
Intellectfls ; V. Prodrouii ; VI. Philosophia Secunda — The Baconian 
Logic— His Style— His Minor Works 68 



CHAPTER V. 



ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 

Comparison between the Greek and Mediasval Dramas — Similarity of their 
Origin — Illusion in the Drama — Mysteries or Miracle Plays — Their Sub- 
ject and Construction — Moralities — The Vice — Interludes—The Four 
P.'s — FirstRegularDramas— Comedies— Tragedies— Early English The- 
atres — Scenery — Costume — State of the Dramatic Profession - - 86 



CHAPTER VI. 

MARLOW AND. SHAKSPEARE. 

Marlow — His Career and Works — His Faustus— His Death— Contemporary 
judgments on his Genius — Shakspeare — His Birth, Education, and early 
Life— Traditions respecting him— His Marriage — Early Studies— Goes to 
London— His Career— Death and Monument— Order of his Works— Ro- 
man Plays — His Diction— Characters 102 



CONTENTS. IX, 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE SHAKSPEARIAN DRAMATISTS. 

Page 
Ben Jonson : The Humours — His Roman Plays — Comedies — Plots. Beau- 
mont and Fletcher — Massinger — Chapman — Dekker — Webster — Middle- 
ton — Marston — Ford — Shirley _...... 120 

CHAPTER VHI. 

THE GREAT DIVINES. 

Theological Eloquence of England and France — The Civil War — Perse- 
cution of the Clergy — Richard Hooker — His Life and Character — Treatise 
on Ecclesiastical Polity — Jeremy Taylor — Compared with Hooker — His 
Life — Liberty of Prophesying — His other Works — The Restoration — 
Taylor's Sermons — Hallam's Criticism — Taylor's Digressive Style — Isaac 
Barrow — His immense Acquirements — Compared to Pascal — The English 
Universities -.-_.-.-_. . 123 

CHAPTER IX. 

JOHN MILTON. 

His poetical character — Religious and Political Opinions — Republicanism — 
His Learning — Travels in Italy — Prose Works — Areopagitica — Prose 
Style — Treatises on Divorce — His Literary Meditations — Tractate of 
Education — Passion for Music — Paradise Lost — Dante and Milton com- 
pared — Study of Romance — Campbell's Criticism — Paradise Regained — 
Minor Poems — Samson Agonistes --..... 148 

CHAPTER X. 

BUTLER AND DRYDEN. 

The Commonwealth ; and the Restoration — Milton and Butler — Subject and 
nature of Hudibras — Hudibras and Don Quixote — State of Society at the 
Restoration — Butler's Life — John Dryden — French Taste of the Court — 
Comedies and rhymed Tragedies — Life and Works of Dryden — Dramas — 
Annus Mirabilis — Absalom and Achitophel — Religio Laici — Hind and 
Panther — Dryden's later Works — Translation of Virgil — Odes — Fables — 
Prefaces and Dedications — Juvenal — Mac Flecknoe - - - - 167 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XI. 

CLARENDON, BUNYAN, AND LOCKE. 

Page 

Clarendon's Life — History of the Rebellion — Characters — John Bunyan — 
The Pilgrim's Progress — Allegory — Style — Life of Bunyan — Locke — The 
New Philosophy — Practical Character of Locke's Works — Life — Letters 
on Toleration — Essay on the Human Understanding — Theory of Ideas — 
Treatises on Government — Essay on Education _ . - . 189 

CHAPTER Xn. 

THE WITS OF QUEEN ANNE's REIGN. 

Artificial School — Pope's Early Studies — Pope compared to Dryden — Essay 
on Criticism — Rape of the Lock — Mock-heroic Poetry — Temple of Fame, 
&c. — Translation of Homer — Essay on Man — Miscellanies — The Dunciad 
— Satires and Epistles — Edward Young — English Melancholy — The Uni- 
versal Passion — Night Thoughts — Young's Style — His Wit - - 205 

CHAPTER Xm. 

SWIFT AND THE ESSAYISTS. 

Coarseness of Manners in the 17th and 18th Centuries — Jonathan Swift — 
Battle of the Books — Tale of a Tub — Pamphlets — Stella and Vanessa — 
Drapier's Letters — Voyages of Gulliver — Minor Works — Poems — Steele 
and Addison — Cato — Tatler — Spectator — Samuel Johnson — Prose Style 
— Satires — London, and The Vanity of Human Wishes — Rasselas — Jour- 
ney to the Hebrides — Lives of the Poets — Edition of Shakspeare — Dic- 
tionary — Rambler and Idler .--.--. . 226 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE GREAT NOVELISTS. 

History of Prose Fiction — Spain, Italy, and France — The Romance and the 
Novel — Defoe — Robinson Crusoe — Source of its Charm — Defoe's Air of 
reality — Minor Works — Richardson — Pamela — Clarissa Harlowe — Fe- 
male Characters — Sir Charles Grandison — Fielding — Joseph Andrews — 
Jonathan Wild — Tom Jones — Amelia — Smollett — Roderick Random — 



CONTENTS. XI 

Page 
Sea Characters — Peregrine Pickle — Count Fathom — Humphrey Clinker — 
Sterne — Tristram Shandy, and the Sentimental Journey — Goldsmith — 
Chinese Letters — Traveller and Deserted Village — Vicar of Wakefield — 
Comedies — Histories ----.._._ 249 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE GREAT HISTORIANS. 

David Hume — As Historian — As Moralist and Metaphysician — Attacks on 
Revealed Religion — William Robertson — Defects of the "Classicist" — 
Historians — Edward Gibbon — The Decline and Fall — His Prejudices 
against Christianity — Guizot's Judgment on Gibbon - - - - 277 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE TRANSITION SCHOOL. 

Landscape and Familiar Poetry — James Thomson — The Seasons — Episodes 
— Castle of Indolence — Minor Works — Lyric Poetry — Thomas Gray — 
The Bard, and the Elegy — Collins and Shenstone — The Schoolmistress 
— Ossian — Chatterton and the Rowley Poems — William Cowper — George 
Crabbe — The Lowland Scots — Dialect and Literature — Robert Burns 290 



CHAPTER XVH. 

SCOTT AND SOUTHEY. 

Walter Scott — The Lay of the Last Minstrel — Marmion — Lady of the Lake 
— Lord of the Isles — Waverley — Guy Mannering — Antiquary — Tales of 
My Landlord — Ivanhoe — Monastery and Abbot — Kenilworth — Pirate — 
Fortunes of Nigel — Peveril — Quentin Durward — St. Ronan's Well — Red- 
gauntlet — Tales of the Crusaders — Woodstock — Chronicles of the Canon- 
gate — Anne of Geierstein — Robert Southey — Thalaba and Kehama — 
Madoc — Legendary Tales — Roderick — Prose Works and Miscellanies 315 



CHAPTER XVHI. 

MOORE, BYRON, AND SHELLEY. 

Moore — Translation of Anacreon — Little's Poems — Political Satires — The 
Fudge Family — Irish Medodies — Lalla Rookh — Epicurian — Biographies. 



Xll CONTENTS. 

Page 
Byron : Hours of Idleness, and English Bards — Romantic Poems — The 
Dramas — Childe Harold — Don Juan — Death of Byron. Shelley : Poema 
and Philosophy — Queen Mab, Prometheus Unbound, Alastor, &c. — The 
Cenci — Minor Poems and Lyrics ..---.- 343 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE MODERN NOVELISTS. 

Prose Fiction — The Romance : Walpolc, Mrs. Radcliffe, Lewis, Maturin, 
and Mrs. Shelley — James, Ainsworth, and Bulwer — The Novel : Miss 
Burney — Godwin — Miss Edgeworth — Local Novels: Gait, Wilson, Ba- 
nim, &c. — Fashionable Novels: Ward, Lister, &c. — Miss Austen — 
Hook — Mrs. Trollope — Miss Mitford — Warren — Dickens — Novels of 
Foreign Life : Beckfbrd, Hope, and Morier — Naval and Military Novels : 
Marryat and R. Scott 370 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE STAGE, ORATORY, POLITICS, THEOLOGY, METAPHYSICS, AND 
JOURNALISM. 

Comedy in England — Congreve, Farquhar, &c. — Sheridan — The Modern 
Romantic Drama — Oratory in England : Burke — Letters of Junius — 
Modern Theologians : Paley and Butler — Blackstone — Adam Smith — 
Metaphysics: Stewart — ■ Bentham — Periodicals: the Newspaper, the 
Magazine, and the Review — The Quarterly, and Blackwood — The Edin- 
burgh, and the New Monthly — The Westminster — Cheap Periodical Lite- 
rature .--..-.----- 400 



CHAPTER XXr. 

WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, AND THE NEW POETRY. 

Wordsworth and the Lake School — Philosophical and Poetical Theories — 
The Lyrical Ballads — The Excursion — Sonnets — Coleridge — Poems and 
Criticisms — Conversational Eloquence — Charles Lamb — The Essays of 
Elia — Leigh Hunt — Keats — Hood — The Living Poets — Conclusion - 417 



OUTLINES 



GENERAL LITERATURE, 



CHAPTER I. 

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 



Britons — Their Oriental Origin — Ccesar's Invasion, B.C. 60 — Traces of the Celtic 
Speech in English — Analysis of English — Saxon Tongue — Disuse of Saxon 
Inflections — The English fh— The English W — Pronunciation — Latin Element 
— Origin of English Language — Norman Conquest — William — Monasteries — 
Twelfth Century — Saxon Chronicle — Norman French — Layamon — Thirteenth 
Century — Robert of Gloucester — Neologism — Fourteenth Century — Mannyng 
— Wickliffe and Chaucer — Gower — Hermit of Hampole — Pleadings in English 
— Trevisa, Translation of Higdon — Mandeville — Fifteenth Century — Lydgate 
— Statutes in English — Sixteenth Century — Reformation — Cheke — Skelton — 
Surrey and Wyatt — Berners — Ascham — Spenser, Chaucerism — Euphuism — 
Seventeenth Century — Protectorate — Gallicism — Restoration — Eighteenth 
Century — Proportion of Saxon in English. 

The most ancient inhabitants of the British islands were the 
Celts, Cyrary, or Britons, as they are variously styled. That 
these rude and savage tribes were offshoots from the mighty race 
whose roots have struck so deep into the soil of most countries 
of Western and Southern Europe, there can be no doubt. Antiqua- 
ries may be undecided as to the origin of this venerable family 
of mankind, or as to the period at which it first migrated into 
Europe ; but it is impossible not to believe that it formed one of 
the primary divisions of the human race ; and there is very strong 
probability, from many noteworthy circumstances, that it origin- 
ally came from the eastern regions of the globe. 

In their mysterious and venerable system of theistic philosophy 
there are to be found so many points of resemblance with various 
recondite doctrines which we know to have been current from 
the remotest ages in the interior of India, that it is very difficult 
to believe such resemblance to be entirely accidental; particularly 
2 



H OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. I. 

when we reflect that many of these dogmas— the transmigration 
of the soul, for instance — were parts of a creed not at all likely 
to have arisen spontaneously among so rude and savage a people 
as we know the Celts to have been. The extraordinary rever- 
ence paid by the Druids to the oak; their adoption of the mistle- 
toe as an emblem of the immortality of the soul ; the peculiar 
virtues which they attached to the number three; the magic 
powers which they imagined to reside in certain rhythmical and 
musical combinations ; their addiction to the study of astronomy ; 
and the singular peculiarity of a religious caste among them — these, 
among many other coincidences, would seem to claim for the 
Celts an evident, though perhaps remote, Oriental origin ; an 
opinion further strengthened by the analogies which exist between 
some of the most ancient Indian dialects and the lanffuage of the 
Britons. 

It was with this singuhir people that the Romans came in con- 
tact; and seldom had Ctcsar's iron veterans encountered a more 
desperate and obstinate foe. With the history of that long con- 
test we have nothing to do at present; it is sufficient for our pur- 
pose to sketch, as briefly and as rapidly as possible, the results of 
the struggle. Such of the Britons as were spared by the Roman 
sword, by the not less fatal influence of Latin corruption, and 
the fierce intestine convulsions which decimated their raidvs, were 
gradually driven back from the southern and central parts of Brit- 
ain to take refuge in the inaccessible fastnesses of their mountains. 
A glance at the map will suffice to explain this ; for we shall see 
the descendants of the ancient British race still occupying those 
parts of the country to which their ancestors had retired. In all 
districts of England and Scotland distinguished by any consider- 
able tract of mountains, the Celtic blood has remained more or 
less pure, the Celtic language unchanged, and strong traces of the 
Celtic manners, language, and superstitions still prevail. It is, 
however, singular to remark how invariably the Celtic race has 
continued to diminish wherever it has been exposed to contact 
with the Teutonic tribes : thus the once purely Celtic population 
of Cornwall has gradually lost its individual character, and has 
almost ceased to exist; in Wales and in the Highlands of Scot- 
land, two districts in which, and particularly in the former, the 
British blood has been least exposed to foreign admixture, the 
ancient race is yet slowly losing its marked peculiarities ; and the 
day will probably come when the wild mountain fastnesses, which 
formed an insuperable barrier to the Roman sword and to the 
Saxon battle-axe, will have ceased to resist the silent spread of 
Teutonic commerce and Teutonic civilization. 

The fate of tiie Celtic race in Britain has somewhat resembled 
that of the aboriginal tribes of the American continents: slowly 



CHAP. I.] TRACES OF CELTIC SPEECH IN ENGLISH. 15 

but surely have they retired and contracted before the invadiiijr 
nations ; and possibly iu future ages the harp of the Bard and 
the claymore of the Sennachie will be picturesque but unsubstan- 
tial recollections, such as exist of the feathered tunic of the Mex- 
itlan or the chivalrio scalping-tuft of the Sioux. 

Words are the pictures or reflections of things ; and the genius, 
character, and capabilities of a nation can in no way be so well 
studied as in its language. From the earliest periods of our 
history the Celtic race has existed over the whole or a notable 
portion of the British islands ; the British language, and, in some 
cases, no other, is spoken over a considerable extent of these 
countries — in Wales, in the Highlands of Scotland, in Ireland, 
and in the Isle of Man ; some among these tribes possess large 
collections of very ancient and curious poems written in the 
respective dialects of the great Celtic speech ; and yet, notwith- 
standing all this, the number of Celtic words which have taken 
root in the English language is so incredibly small that it can 
hardly be said to have exerted any influence whatever on the 
composite speech now used in the country. A large proportion, 
too, even of these scanty transplantations has taken place at a 
comparatively recent period, and the words so adopted have 
generally been transferred by poets and writers of fiction — Scott, 
for example — who found the Celtic expression either more pic- 
turesque and forcible than the equivalent which already existed 
in Englisli (of Norman and Saxon origin), or else a lively and 
characteristic image for some object or idea peculiarly Celiic. 
Of the former kind we may adduce the words " cmn?," " ci-om- 
lech,^^ and of the latter the word '■'■ clan.^'' "Clan," it is evident, 
expresses an idea so exclusively Celtic that it forms a perfect 
and untranslatable sign of that idea ; while " cairn," thougli by 
no means peculiar lo the Celts, and defining a mode of honour- 
able burial universal in former ages (as testified by the ;^ajtto5 of 
the Greek heroic age, by the tumulus of the Etruscan peoples, 
and by the barrows of the Teutons), was nevertheless adopted 
as being a more local and exact image of the same hero-burial 
among the Celts. 

With regard to the paucity of Celtic words which have retained 
a place in modern English, a Russian would remark something 
analogous in the history of his own language. The Tartars, in 
spite of two centuries and a half of complete and universal domi- 
nation in Russia, have left hardly any traces of their language 
in the present Slavonic dialect of Russia ; and the iew words of 
Tartar origin that might be cited generally express articles of 
dress, equipment, food, &c., for which the Russians had no 
proper equivalent. In this case too we may note the diff'erence 
of circumstances, which tended to prevent any fusion between 



16 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. I. 

the conquered and conquerors : the abhorrence with which the 
Russian people — always extremely bigoted — regarded rapacious 
and haughty oppressors of a different religion, and of utterly 
barbarous habits. It is to be remarked, too, that the Tartar lan- 
guage is destitute of any literature at all comparable, in point of 
richness or antiquity, to the Celtic poems — a barrenness which 
the Russian must have contrasted with his own majestic, flexible, 
and abundant idiom. Compare with this scanty and meagre trans- 
fusion of Tartar words, the immense and permanent influence of 
the Moors upon the language, sentiment, and character of Spain, 
during the glorious domiuion of the Mahommedans in Granada, 
and we shall see that, while the Moorish or Arab element forms 
an integral, permanent, and essential ingredient in the language 
of the country, the communication between the conquering and 
conquered nations must be rated, in the case of Britain and of 
Russia, so much lower as to be considered comparatively insig- 
nificant. 

During the Roman occupation of the isles of Britain — an oc- 
cupation which extended over a period of 470 years, i. e. from 
60 B.C. to A.D. 410 — there can be no doubt but that a considerable 
part of the indigenous population submitted to the victorious in- 
vaders, and continued to occupy their estates in the Roman pro- 
vinces of Britain, paying tribute, as was natural, to the Roman 
government. We know, too, that the officers and soldiers of the 
Ronfan legions permanently stationed in Britain freely intermixed, 
and even allied themselves, by marriage and otherwise, with the 
now half-civilized British population which surrounded their 
military posts; and we may consequently speculate upon what 
■would have been the consequence had they continued to maintain 
their footing in Britain. In the process of time there would have 
arisen a new mixed population, partaking in some measure of the 
qualities, of the blood, and perhaps also the vices, of its double 
origin ; and, what is of more importance to our present subject, 
the language spoken at the present day by the descendants of such 
a Creole race would have resembled the French or the Spanish ; 
that is to say, it would have been a dialect bearing the physiog- 
nomic character of some one of the numerous Romanz languages, 
all of which are the result of efTorts, more or less successful, of 
a rude Celtic or Gaulish nation to speak the Latin, with which 
they were only acquainted by practice and by the ear. 

In this barbarous, but useful and improvable dialect, some 
words of the ancient Gaulish or Celtic would remain; and in 
point of proximity to the Latin — its fundamental element — it 
would resemble the language of classical Rome to a greater or to 
a less degree exactly in proportion as the communication with 
the Romans was closer or more relaxed. Further, if the language 



CHAP. I.] TRACES OF CELTIC SPEECH IN ENGLISH. 17 

of the conquerors happened to be, as was the case with that of 
Rome, an inflected and highly artificial tongue, the new dialect 
would be distinguished, like the modern French or the Italian, by 
an almost universal suppression of all inflected terminations indi- 
cating the various modifications of meaning, which modifications 
would thereafter be expressed by independent particles — by pre- 
positions, by pronouns, by auxiliary verbs. 

But the supposition which has just been made was not to be 
verified in the modern language of the country: such a species of 
corrupt Latinity was not destined to become in our times the 
spoken dialect of the British islands ; and, small as is the influence 
upon our present speech of the pure Celtic aboriginal tongue, the 
corruption of that tongue by the admixture of Latin (or rather the 
corruption of the Latin by the admixture of Celtic forms) was to 
be no less completely supplanted by new invasions, and by new 
languages originating in different and distant regions. It is un- 
doubtedly obvious that a very large part of the modern English 
vocabulary, and even many forms of English grammar, are to be 
traced to the Romanz dialect, and therefore must be considered 
as having arisen from a corrupted Latinity, such as we have been 
describing as likely to have been employed by Gallic or Celtic 
tribes imperfecdy acquainted with Latin. It would, however, be 
a fatal mistake to consider that these, or even any part of them, 
came from any such Romanz dialect or lingua franca ever spoken 
originaUij in Britain. They are, and without any exception, not 
of British growth, but were introduced into the English language 
after the Norman invasion of the country in 1066. 

We have said that the traces existing in the modern English of 
the aboriginal Celtic are exceeding few and faint: it is, however, 
proper to except one class of words — we allude to the names of 
places. In the long period of anarchy and bloodshed which in- 
tervened between the departure of the Romans and the arrival of 
the Saxon hordes in 449, and the gradual foundation in England of 
the Eight Kingdoms, the country must be conceived to have gone 
back rather than advanced in the career of civilization. The 
Saxons, we know, who were during a long period incessantly at 
war, as the Romans had been before them, with the Picts, the 
Scots, and the Welsh, strenuously endeavoured to obliterate every 
trace of the ancient language, even from the geography of the 
regions they had conquered: and it is singular to observe an 
Anglo-Saxon king, himself the member of a nation not very far 
removed from its ancient rudeness and ferocity, stigmatising as 
barbarous the British name of a spot to which he had occasion 
to allude, as known ^'■barbarico nomine Pendyfig," by the bar- 
barous — this was the British — name of Pendyfig. National 
Ijatred is perhaps the longest-lived of all things: and it is curious 

3* 



18 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. I. 

to observe the mutual dislike and contempt still existing be- 
tween the Celtic and the Saxon race, and the Irish peasant of 
the present day expressing, in words which 1300 years have not 
deprived of their original bitterness, liis detestation of the Sas- 
senagh — the Saxon. A moment's inspection of the map of 
England will show the immense number of places which have 
retained, in whole or in part, their original Celtic form : we may 
instance the terminating syllable don with which many of these 
names conclude, and which is the Celtic (/wn, signifying a fortified 
rock. The Irish Kil, which begins so many names of places, is 
nothing more than a corruption of the Celtic Caille, signifying a 
forest; and the Caer, frequently found in the beginning of Welsh, 
Cornish, and Armorican names, and which the Bretons have so 
often preserved in the initial syllable Ker (as Kerhoet), is evidently 
nothing but Catr, the rock or stone. 

From what has been suggested, then, upon the subject of the 
Celtic language, the reader will conclude that, for all practical 
purposes of analogy or of derivation, it has exerted no appreciable 
influence on the modern speech of the country. Some few words 
indeed have been adopted into English from the tongue of the 
aboriginal possessors of the country, but so few in number, and 
so unimportant in signification, that it will be found to have bor- 
rowed as much from the language of Portugal, nay, even from 
those of China and Hindustan, as it has derived from the ancient 
indigenous tongue. 

The English language, then, viewed with reference to its com- 
ponent elements, must be considered as a mixture of the Saxon 
and of the Romanz or corrupted Roman of the middle ages: and 
before we can proceed to investigate the peculiar character, 
geniiTs, and history of such a composite dialect, it will be essen- 
tial to establish with some degree of correctness — first, in what 
proportions these two elements are found in the compound sub- 
stance under consideration; and second, what were the periods 
and what were the influences during and through which the pro- 
cess of amalgamation took place. 

In examining the relative proportions of two or more elements 
forming together a new dialect, it would certainly be a very sim- 
ple and unphilosophical analysis which should consist of simply 
counting the various vocables in a dictionary and arranging them 
under the various languages from which they are derived, then 
striking a balance between them, and assigning as the true origin 
of the language the dialect to which the greater number should 
be found to belong. No; we must pay some attention to the 
nature and significance of the vocables themselves, and also to 
the degree of primiliveness and antiquity of their meaning; nor 
must Ave neglect, in particular, to take into the account the general 



CHAP. I.] SAXON TONGUE. 19 

form and analogies of the composite language viewed as a whole. 
It is evident that that dialect must be the primitive or radical one 
from which are derived (he greatest number of vocables expressing 
the simpler ideas and the most universally known objects — such 
objects and ideas, in short, as cannot but possess equivalents in 
every human speech, however rude its stale or imperfect its de- 
velopment. 

Following this important rule, we shall find that all the primary 
ideas, and all the simpler objects, natural and artificial, are ex- 
pressed in English by words so evidently of Teutonic origin — 
nay, so slightly varied from Teutonic forms — that a knowledge 
of the German will render them instantly intelligible and recog- 
nizable. Such, for instance, are the words " man," " woman" 
(wif-man ; i. e. female man), " sun," "moon," "earth;" the names 
of the simpler colours, as "green," "red," "yellow" (note that 
" purple" — a compound colour — is derived from the Greek), 
"brown," &c. ; the commoner and simpler acts of life, " to 
run," "to fly," "to eat," "to sing," &c. ; the primary and funda- 
mental passions of our nature, and the verbs which express those 
passions as in activity, "love," "fear," "hate," &c. ; the names 
of the ordinary animals and their cries, as "horse," "hound," 
"sheep," "to neigh," "to bark," "to bleat," "to low," &c. ; the 
arts and employments, the trades and dignities of life, "to read," 
" to write," " seamen," " king," " miller," " earl," " queen," &e. ; 
and the most generally known among artificial objects, as "house," 
" boat," " door." It is worthy of remark how universally applica- 
ble is this principle of antiquity or priraitiveness : thus, those reli- 
gious objects and ideas which are of the simplest and most ob- 
vious character are represented in English by words derived from 
the Teutonic dialects, whileihe more complicated and artificial — 
what we may call the scientific or technic — portion of the reli- 
gious vocabulary, is almost in every case of Latin or Greek deri- 
vation: thus, ""God," "fiend," "wicked," "righteous," "hell," 
"faith," "hope," &c,, are all pure Saxon words; while " predes- 
tination," "justification," " baptism," &c., will generally be found 
to come from other sources. So generally, indeed, is this prin- 
ciple observable in the English language, that we may in most 
cases decide « priori, whether the equivalent for a given object 
or idea be a Saxon or a Latin word, by observing whether that 
object be a primitive and simple or a complex and artificial one. 

It must not, however, be inferred from this that the Saxon lan- 
guage was a rude and uncultivated mode of speech : such a notion 
would be in the highest degree unjust and unfounded. Like all 
the languages of the Teutonic stock, the Anglo-Saxon was dis- 
tinguished for its singular vigour, expressiveness, and exactness, 



20 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. I. 

and in particular for the great facilities it afforded for the forma- 
tion of compound words. 

We may remark that most of the Saxon compound words 
have ceased to exist in the modern English : in short, the tendency 
of our remarks is to show, not that the Saxon was incapable of 
expressing even the most complex and refined ideas, but that, by 
a curious fatality, those words have generally given place, in the 
tongue of tiie present day, to equivalents drawn from the Latin and 
Greek origins. That this substitution (for which we shall endea- 
vour to assign a reason) of Latin and Greek derivatives for words 
of Saxon stock has been injurious in some cases to the expressive- 
ness, and in all to the vigour, of the modern idiom, no one can 
deny who compares the distinctness of tlie older words, in which 
all the elements would be known to an English peasant, with the 
somewhat pedantic and far-fetched equivalents: for instance, how 
much more picturesque, and, let us add, intelligible, are the words 
" mildheartedness," "deathsman," " moonling," than the corre- 
sponding "mercifulness," "executioner," and "lunatic" ! 

But perhaps the most singular transformation undergone by the 
Saxon language, in the course of its becoming the basis of the 
English, is the annihilation of all, or nearly all, its inflections. 
The tongue of our Saxon ancestors was distinguished, like the 
modern German — one of the offshoots of the same great parent 
stock — by a considerable degree of grammatical complexity ;■ it 
possessed its declensions, its cases, its numbers, and in particular 
its genders of substantive and adjective, indicated by terminations, 
as in almost all the languages ever spoken on the earth. 

The whole of this elaborate apparatus has been rejected in our 
present speech, in the same manner as a great portion of it has 
been rejected by the Italian, Spanish, and French languages in 
their process of descent from the Latin. The English language 
presents, therefore, the singular phenomenon of a dialect derived 
from two distinct sources, each characterized by peculiarities of 
inflection, yet itself absolutely or nearly without any traces of the 
method of inflection prevalent in either the one or the other of 
those sources. 

Among the singularities of the English pronunciation which 
place, as it were, upon the threshold of the language so many un- 
expected obstacles in the way of the foreigner, there are two or 
three always found peculiar difliculties by all, and particularly by 
Germans, who discover, in other respects, so many analogies 
between their language and our own. These are, among others, 
the sound, or rather the two distinct sounds, of the th. A very 
little explanation would sufBce to render at all events the theo- 
retical part of this difficulty very easy and intelligible to them ; 
for they would then discover that the th which they so bitterly 



CHAP. I.~! PRONUNCIATION. 21 

complain of represents the sound of two different and distinct 
letters in the Saxon alphabet, which were most injudiciously sup- 
pressed, their place being supplied by the combination th, which 
exists in almost all the European languages, but which is pro- 
nounced in none of them as in the English. The Saxon letters 
in question are b and p, and are nothing more than b and c (the 
Saxon d and t) followed by an aspirate, indicated by the cross 
line; and which are both most absurdly represented in English 
by th, the pronunciation of which varies, as in the words " //«'.s" 
and '■'■thin;" to assign the right sound being an effort of memory 
in the learner. Now the Saxon words in which is found the 
character b are almost invariably observed to exist in German 
with the simple b, and those containing p, with either i) or th; a 
circumstance tending strongly to prove that it is the Germans 
who have lost the ancient aspirated sound of the two letters or com- 
binations (for it is of no consequence whether they were anciently 
written by the Germans with one character or two), and that, 
consequently, the English alone, of all the Teutonic races, have 
preserved the true ancient pronunciation in this particular. The 
same conclusion may be arrived at, we think not unfairly, with 
reference to the English iv, the letter corresponding to which in 
German, viz. lu, seems to have lost not only its true name, but 
also, which is of much more importance, even its correct sound.* 

If the German pronunciation of tu be the correct and original 
one, either the 'j or the f is a superfluous and unnecessary letter. 
We think it, therefore, not improbable that in this, as well as in 
the preceding instance, it is the English language alone which, in 
spite of a thousand fluctuations and a thousand caprices in ortho- 
graphy and etymology, has preserved the genuine pronunciation 
of these very important letters: we say very important, for it is 
only sufhcient to reflect on the immense number of words in Ger- 
man, English, and, in short, all the Teutonic languages into the 
structure of which enters one or tlie other of these letters, to be 
convinced that the th, the d, and the iv play a most considerable 
part. 

The pronunciation of every language must obviously depend 
principally upon the sounds assigned to the various vowels, and 
consequenUy the learner, when he finds that in English almost all 
the vowels have a name and a power totally different from what 
they bear in all other tongues, is apt to lose all courage, and to 
despair of using, in the acquisition of English, the most powerful 
instrument with which he can be armed ; namely, the analogy 
existing between the original and the derived dialects. He finds, 
for instance, that the English vowels a, e, i, and ii, have quite 

* The Germans pronounce w as v in English. 



22 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. I. 

different names and sounds from the same characters in French 
and German; and his ear, perpetually tantalised by analogies of 
sound which do not exist, is very apt to become incapable of 
perceiving those which do. So generally, indeed, is this difhculty 
experienced, that it may be laid down as an almost universal 
principle, that in all words derived from a foreign source, and na- 
turalized in the English vocabulary, one of two results is invari- 
ably found to take place ; viz. either the pronunciation of the 
original word is changed, or its orthography : in other terms, the 
word is made to submit either to the pronunciation of the English 
letters, when its original spelling is retained, or the spelling is 
altered, so as to make another combination of English letters ex- 
press the original sound of the word. In the case, however, of 
derivatives from languages of the Teutonic stock, these changes 
of orthography ought by no means to be considered as involving 
such great difficulty as is generally attributed to them ; and in a 
majority of cases they will be found much less capricious than is 
usually supposed. One considerable portion of the above diffi- 
culty arises from the circumstance that there exists in German a 
much greater number of diphthongal combinations than have been 
retained, in a written form, in the English ; and thus we are fre- 
quently obliged to represent such combinations by means of our 
limited number of vowels, in giving to the same vowels a differ- 
ent power, and consequently assigning to each letter a number of 
distinct and often very dissimilar sounds. 

As an example of this, let us take the word 53?iinn, which is 
so faithfully reflected in the English man, that the identity of 
meaning in the two cases is instantly and inevitably perceived; 
in the plural, however, of the English form, the a of the singular 
is changed into e, forming an exception to the usual manner of 
expressing the plural of a substantive by the addition of s. Now 
it is obvious that the e of the plural number in the word men is 
nothing else than an attempt to represent in English the some- 
what complicated combination of vowels in the German plural 
9}Jflnncr, i. e. maenner, of which sound the English e, though 
not an exact, yet is the best representation of which the case 
would admit. Of this kind of representation the examples are 
innumerable, and they will go far to explain, if not to palliate, the 
alleged caprice of the English pronunciation. Again, in that mul- 
titude of words which exist in nearly similar forms (though it 
must be confessed under great differences in point of pronuncia- 
tion) in the French and English languages, and which have a 
common Latin origin, it will be universally found that, however 
great be the differences of pronunciation, the orthography in tbe 
English form is in geaeral so litde changed from the original 
Latin as to be immediately recognizable. Indeed, it is very curi- 



CHAP. 1.] ORIGIN OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 23 

ous to remark that the orthography of almost tlie whole of this 
large class of words is in English absolutely much more correct, 
that is, much closer to the Latin — than in the French, the Italian, 
or even than in the Spanish itself; so much so indeed as to in- 
duce a linguistic student, unacquainted with the history of the 
language, rather to suppose that these words came into modern 
English either directly from the Latin, or that they were incor- 
porated into our speech through some separate and independent 
channel, than that they had been (as they undoubtedly were) first 
filtered, so to speak, through the French and Italian idioms. It is 
strange that this large stream of words seems to have purified 
itself from foreign admixtures as it descended from the antique 
Latin through the various Romanz idioms which have become the 
several languages of modern Europe; so much so, that the Latin 
words in our present speech may be said, at least as far as their 
orthography is concerned, to have reached among us a greater 
purity than they have in French, Italian, or even in Spanish. 

"Nothing can be more difficult," says the judicious and accu- 
rate Hallam, "than to determine, except by an arbitrary line, the 
commencement of the English language ; not so much, as in 
those of the continent, because we are in want of materials, but 
rather from an opposite reason — the possibility of tracing a very 
gradual succession of verbal changes that ended in a change of 
denomination. For when we compare the earliest English of 
the thirteenth century with the Anglo-Saxon of the twelfth, it 
seems hard to pronounce why it should pass for a separate lan- 
guage, rather than a modification or simplification of the former. 
We must conform, however, to usage, and say that the Anglo- 
Saxon was converted into English — 1, by contracting or other- 
wise modifying the pronunciation and orthography of words ; 3, 
by omitting many inflections, especially of the noun, and conse- 
quently making more use of articles and auxiliaries ; 3, by the 
introduction of French derivatives ; 4, by using less inversion and 
ellipsis, especially in poetry. Of these, the second alone, I think, 
can be considered as sufficient to describe a new form of language ; 
and this was brought about so gradually, that we are not relieved 
of much of our difficulty, whether some compositions shall pass 
for the latest offspring of the mother, or the earliest fruits of the 
fertility of the daughter." 

With respect to this excellent and comprehensive judgment, it 
is only necessary to remark, that in tracing practically the appli- 
cation to the English language of the first of these processes by 
which Hallam explains the gradual transition from the Anglo- 
Saxon into English, they are found universally taking place in 
the transformation of an inflected into an uninflected language, or 
even into one less completely and regularly inflected : a very long 



24 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. I. 

list has been made, nay, an almost complete vocaliulary might be 
compiled, of words in the French language which difler from their 
Latin roots only in their having lost the final syllable, expressive, 
in the Roman tongue, of case, of gender, or of tense. A very 
few instances will suffice; if we compare, for example, the old 
French horn and horns with the Latin hom-o and hom-ines, we 
shall find that only as much of the Roman inflection has been re- 
tained as was indispensable to the required distinction of singular 
and plural. In other respects the word was truncated — and it is 
of no consequence whether this contraction took place gradually 
or suddenly — until nothing remains but the significant or radical 
syllable hoin. 

Li tracing, from the momentous epoch of the Norman invasion, 
the gradual development of the English language, it will be by 
no means necessary to enter into any very minute details of phi- 
lological archeology : our task will be more agreeably, and cer- 
tainly not less profitably fulfilled, if we content ourselves with 
accompanying, with due reverence and a natural admiration, the 
advance of that noble language along the course of centuries : 
we shall see it, springing from the distant sources of barbarous 
and unpolished but free and vigorous generations, at one time roll- 
ing harshly, like a mountain streamlet, over the rugged bed of Sax- 
on antiquity, then slowly and steadily gliding onward in a calmer 
and more majestic swell, receiving into its bosom a thousand 
tributary currents, from the wild mountains of Scandinavia, from 
the laughing valleys of Provence and Languedoc, from the storied 
plains of Italy or the haunted shores of Greece, from the sierras 
of Andalusia and the Moorish vegas of Granada — till, broadening 
and strengthening as it rolls, it bears upon its immeasurable 
breast the solidest treasures of human wisdom and the fairest 
harvests of poesy and wit. 

It is by no means to be supposed that the invasion of the Nor- 
mans under William was the first point of contact between the 
Saxon and French races in England, and that it is to that event 
that we must attribute the first fusion: on the contrary, it is well 
established that for a long time previous to this epoch the nobles 
and the court of England had affected to imitate French fashions, 
and even sent their youth to be partially educated in the latter 
country. Between the sovereign houses of Great Britain and 
Normandy, in particular, there were too many relations of blood 
and alliance of ancient standing to allow us to be surprised at 
this. This imitation of French customs, dress, and language 
was not likely to be very palatable to the English of the pure 
Anglo-Saxon stock, and we accordingly find that a good deal of 
ridicule was cast by the lower orders on such of their country- 
men as showed too great a taste for the manners of the other 



CHAP. I.] SAXON CHRONICLE, 1150. 25 

side of the Strait of Dover. Tiiey had a species of proverbial 
saying with respect to such followers of outlandish fashions, 
which is not destitute of a certain drollery and salt : " Jacke," 
they said, " woud be a gentilman if he coud hot speke Frenshe." 
It is known, too, that in the first part of his English sovereignty 
William had in vain exhausted his patience and fatigued his ear 
in the attempt to learn the Anglo-Saxon language ; and it was not 
until after his return from Normandy, after a nine months' absence 
from England, that he began to employ, for the suppression of 
the language and nationality of his new kingdom, those severe 
measures which have rendered his name so memorable. It would 
be superfluous to allude to these at any length ; the institution 
of the curfew, the forced employment of the Norman language 
in all public acts and pleadings, the compulsory teaching of Nor- 
man in the schools — all these are well-known measures, and 
sufficiently prove William's conviction that no hope was left of 
subduing the national obstinacy by fair or gentle means, and 
that nothing remained but proscription and violence. 

In spite of these ominous proceedings, however, the sacred 
flame of letters was still kept alive in the monasteries: the su- 
periors of these institutions, it is true, were almost universally 
changed, the recalcitrant Saxons being displaced to make way 
for Norman ecclesiastics, but under the monk's gown there often 
beat the stern Saxon heart, and the labouring brain was often 
working with patriotic fervour under the unmarked cowl. The 
chroniclers of this period were in many cases Saxons, and in 
their rude but picturesque narratives we find the most inefface- 
able marks of the hatred felt by the great body of the nation 
against the haughty conquerors. In these monasteries were taught 
rhetoric, theology, physic, the civil and canon law; and it is in 
them also that were nursed the school divinity and dialectics 
which form so striking a feature in the intellectual physiognomy 
of the middle ages. 

The year 1150 is generally assigned as the epoch at which the 
Saxon language began that process of transformation or corrup- 
tion by which it was ultimately changed into English. This 
change, as we have specified above, was not the effect of the 
Norman invasion, for hardly any new accession of French words 
is perceptible in it for at least a hundred years from this time: it 
maybe remarked that some few French words had crept in before 
this period, and also a considerable Latinising tendency may be 
remarked ; but the changes of which we are speaking are rather 
of form than of matter, and are generally referable to one or other 
of the various causes which have been assigned, in a former page, 
in the clear and emphatic words of Hallam. 

In the year 1150 the Saxon Chronicle — that venerable monu- 
3 



26 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. 1. 

ment of English history — comes to an abrupt conchision. This 
chronicle (or rather series of chronicles, for it was evidently con- 
tinued by a great number of different writers, and exhibits an 
immense variety of style and language) is intended to give an ac- 
count of the English annals from a.d. 1 ; and though the earlier 
portion, as might be expected, is filled wilh trivial and improbably 
fables, the accuracy and importance of the work, as a historical 
document, become immeasurably greater as it approaches the 
period when it was discontinued ; the description of the more 
recent events, and the portraits of contemporary personages, bear- 
ing in many cases evident marks of being the production of men 
who had been the eye-witnesses of what they paint. 

The French language was still spoken at court; and there is 
a curious anecdote exemplifying the profound ignorance of our 
English kings respecting the language and manners of the larger 
portion of their subjects. We read that Henry II., who ascended 
the throne in 1154, having been once addressed by a number of 
his own subjects during a journey into Pembrokeshire, in a 
harangue commencing with the words "Good Olde Kynge!" he 
turned to his courtiers for an interpretation of these words, whose 
meaning was totally unknown to him. 

Towards the latter end of this century, viz. in 1180, Layamon 
wrote his translation of AVace's metrical legendary romance of 
Brut; and nothing will give a more distinct idea of the difficulty 
encountered by philologists in fixing the exact period at which 
the Saxon merged into the English, than the great variety of deci- 
sions founded upon the style of this work; some of our most 
learned antiquarians, among whom is tbe accomplished George 
Ellis, deciding that the language of Layamon is "a simple and 
unmixed, though very barbarous Saxon," while others, who are 
followed by Campbell, consider it to be the first dawning or day- 
break of English. Where so learned and accurate a person as 
Ellis has hesitated, it becomes every one to avoid anything like 
dogmatism ; but the truth probably is, that the language of Laya- 
mon is to be considered either as late Saxon or as very early 
English, according as the philologist is inclined to attribute the 
change from one language into the other to a modification taking 
place in the form or in the matter of the Saxon speech. 

At the beginning of the reign of Henry HI., in 1216, the Eng- 
lish language had made considerable progress, though it had not 
even yet begun to be spoken at court: and it must be regarded 
at this period as a harsh but vigorous and expressive idiom, con- 
taining in itself the seeds or capabilities of future perfection. This 
century, too, is characterised by the circumstance of Latin having 
begun to fall into disuse; the learned adopting their vernacular 
language as a medium for their thoughts. The increasing neglect 



CHAP. I.] FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 27 

of the Latin is to be attributed to the secret but extensive spread 
of those doctrines which afterwards took consistency at the Re- 
formation. Recent investigations have assigned to one very- 
curious monument of old English a different and much earlier 
date than had been previously fixed for it: we allude to the beau- 
tiful song beginning " Sumer ys ycumen in," &c. This vene- 
rable relic has been usually attributed to the fifteenth century, but 
there can be little doubt as to its being really the production of 
the thirteenth. It was probably composed about the year 1250, 
and the language, when divested of its ancient and uncouth spell- 
ing, differs so little from the English of the present day as to have 
caused the error to which we have alluded. About 1280 was 
written the work of Robert of Gloucester, and it is extraordinary 
to observe how great a change had taken place between this time 
and the appearance of Layaraon, a hundred years earlier. We 
are now rapidly approaching a period when the language may be 
said to have acquired some solidity ; for at the beginning of the 
following century we find complaints in a great multitude of 
writers against neologism and innovations in language — an infal- 
lible sign that some standard, however imperfect, and some rules, 
however capricious, had begun to be applied to the idiom — now 
rapidly rising into a written, and consequently regular, language. 
In the year 1303, Robert Mannyng, in his ' Handlyng of Sinne,' 
an English translation of Bishop Grosteste's ' Manuel des Pesches,' 
protests repeatedly against foreign and outlandish innovations: 
" I seke," says tliis venerable purist, " no straunge Ynglyss." 
In what consisted the innovations against which he desires to 
guard — whether the "strange English" was corrupted by an ad- 
mixture of French words, of Latinisms, or of Grecisms — it is 
obviously very difficult to ascertain. This century is one of the 
most important in the history of the literature, and consequently 
in that of the language also. It was in this century that VVick- 
liff'e, in popularising religion, tended also so powerfully to popu- 
larise language : it was in this century, too, that the Father of 
English Literature, the immortal Chaucer himself, introduced the 
elegance, the harmony, the learning, and the taste of the infant 
Italian muse, assimilating and digesting, by the healthy energy of 
genius, what he took, not as a plagiarist, but as a conqueror, from 
Pelrarca and from Boccaccio. Gower, too, who was born shortly 
before the year 1340, mainly helped to polish and refine the lan- 
guage of his country; and though, for want of that vivifying and 
preserving quality, that sacred particle of flame, which we desig- 
nate by the word genius, his works are now obsolete, and con- 
sulted less for any merit of their own than to illustrate his great 
contemporary, the smootlmess and art of his versification had 
doubtless a considerable influence in developing and perfecting 



28 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. I. 

the language. It was in the reign of Edward III. that the Lom- 
bard character was first disused in charters and public acts, and 
to this reign also must be assigned the oldest instrument known 
to exist in the English language. In the middle of this century 
wrote Richard RoUe, the Hermit of Hampole, in whose dull ethi- 
cal poem, the ' Prikke of Conscience,' 'Stimulus Conscientiae' — 
we find the same dread of innovation that was expressed forty 
years earlier by Robert Mannyng, or Robert de Brunne, as he 
was otherwise denominated. The Hermit of Hampole exhibits 
the strongest desire to make himself intelligible to leived or un- 
learned folk: "I seek no straunge Inglyss, bot lightest and com- 
munest." We cannot pass this epoch without an allusion to 
Langlande's 'Vision of Piers Plowman,' a long and rather con- 
fused allegorical poem, containing many striking invectives against 
the corruptions of the Romish priesthood, and in particular a most 
singular prophecy of the severities which were afterwards exer- 
cised against the monastic orders by Henry VIII. at the suppres- 
sion of the religious houses. In 1350, or about that year, the 
character called Old English, or Black Letter, was first used; and 
though the language of this period was disfigured by the most 
barbarous and capricious orthography, it is surprising how similar 
it is, in point of structure and intelligibleness, to the English of 
the present day. 

Twelve years after this, by the wisdom and patriotism of King 
Edward III., the pleadings before the tribunals were restored to 
the vernacular language — an irrefragable proof of the universal 
prevalence of the native speech, and of the diminished influence 
of the Norman French. It is curious to remark how absolutely 
identical has remained the speech of the mob even from so remote 
a period to the present day. The following is a passage from a 
species of political pasquinade disseminated in the year 1382, and 
gives a very fair specimen of the popular language of the day : 
we have modernized the spelling ; and, with this precaution, there 
is not a word or an expression which difi'ers materially from the 
language of the people in the nineteenth century: — "Jack Carter 
prays you all that you make a good end of that ye have be- 
gun, and do well, and still better and better ; for at the even men 
near the day. If the end be well, then all is well. Let Piers 
the ploughman dwell at home, and dight (prepare) us corn. Look 
that Hobbe the robber be well chastised. Stand manly together 
in truth, and help the truth, and the truth shall help you." 

In 1385, the Latin chronicle of Higden (attributed to the year 
1365) was translated into English by John de Trevisa. It ap- 
pears that, in the interval which had elapsed since the original 
was written, the custom of making children in grammar-schools 
translate their Latin into French had been, principally through 



CHAP. 1.3 FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 29 

the patriotic efforts of a certain Sir John Cornewaill, almost uni- 
versally discontinued: "so that now," to use the words of Tre- 
visa, " the yere of ourLorde 1385, in all the grammere scoles of 
Engelond, children leaveih Frensche, and construeth and iernelh 
in Englische." 

Another strong proof of the growing spread and importance of 
the English language at this period is to be found in the circum- 
stance that our earliest traveller. Sir John Mandeville, who had 
written in Latin and in French the interesting account of his long 
wanderings, should have thought fit to give to the world an JEng- 
lish version of the same curious work. 

In his translation of Higden, Trevisa avoids what he calls" the 
old and ancient Englische;" and the same author gives a most 
terrifying description of the barbarous dialects and pronunciation 
prevalent in the remoter parts of the country. " Some use," says 
he, in words ludicrously responsive to the sounds he describes, 
"strange wlaffing, chytryng, barring, garring, and grysbytyng. 
The languages of the Norlhumbres, and specyally at Yorke, is so 
sharpe, slyiyng, frotyng, and unshape, that we sothern men may 
unnethe (hardly) undirslonde that language." And even to the 
present day the inhabitants (even in the neighbouring counties) of 
distant and retired or " uplandish" districts can hardly understand 
each other's speech. According to the learned Ritson, the year 
1388 was signalised by the restoration to the English language of 
parliamentary proceedings — a great and important advance for 
the vernacular idiom: and a singular circumstance, bearing a simi- 
lar tendency, is to be remarked in the fact that both the present 
king, Henry IV., and his son and successor, Henry V., made 
their wills in English, a thing certainly not customary among the 
nobles of the period ; the conduct, therefore, of the two sovereigns, 
proves that they were desirous of setting an example of a more 
general use of the language of the people. 

Henry V. ascended the throne in 1413, and he ever exhibited 
an enlightened care of the national language; a care worthy of 
the heroic sovereign who had so splendidly illustrated his reign 
by his achievements in France, The Victor of Azincourt appears 
to have fostered and protected the language of his country. There 
still exists a letter addressed by this great sovereign to the Com- 
pany of Brewers in London, containing the following remark- 
able expressions: "The English tongue hath in modern daj-s 
begun to be honourably enlarged and adorned, and for the better 
understanding of the people the common idiom is to be exercised 
in writing." It also appears by the same document that many 
of the craft to whom llie letter is addressed "had knowledge of 
reading and writing in the English tongue, but Latin and French 
thev by no means understood." Here, then, we see the revolu- 

8* 



30 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. I. 

lion gradually becoming complete, and the English idiom finally 
succeeding in supplanting, at least for the common business of 
life, the French and the Latin. 

In the following century, and at the beginning of the reign of 
Henry VI,, flourished the poet Lydgate, and also the learned Sir 
John Fortescue, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, one of the 
first important prose-writers in the language. King James of 
Scotland, who holds an honourable place among English poets, 
was assassinated at Perth in the year 1437. The language must 
still be considered as advancing, in spite of the civil contentions 
which agitated England during a considerable part of this century. 
"We may remark that the Gothic letters ceased to be used during 
this period ; and in 1483, at the beginning of the reign of Richard 
III., the statutes were recorded in English, having been till now 
written in the Norman French. As an example of the gradual 
change that had taken place in the language, we may mention the 
fact that Caxton modernized Trevisa in 1487 — Trevisa, who had 
himself, just a hundred years before, so strenuously endeavoured 
to avoid the old English: "thus the whirligig of time," as the 
Clown says in 'Twelfth Night,' "brings about his revenges." 

In 1509 commenced the long and eventful reign of Henry 
VIII., and the recognition, on the part of the sovereign and the 
government, of the principles of the Reformation. The court, 
as well as the nation in general, was distinguished in this age for 
learning and intellectual activity ; and we find a very considerable 
advance in the cultivation of the vernacular language. Among 
the remarkable men who adorned this period it wouhl be impos- 
sible to omit mentioning Sir John Cheke, who first introduced 
into England a profound and enlightened study of the Greek, 
language.- 

Cheke is also entitled to the grateful memory of after genera- 
tions by the wise and accurate attention which he paid himself, 
and inculcated upon others, to the purity of his own language. 
One of the most curious and valuable specimens of the writing 
and criticism of this time is a letter written by him to his friend 
Hoby, containing remarks upon the latter's translation of the 
* Cortegiano' of Casliglione, a very favourite book of this period. 
We cannot forbear quoting a few passages from this excellent 
composition of Cheke, as well on account of the weight and value 
of the sentiments, as on that of the language in which they are 
conveyed. It should be remarked that Sir Thomas Hoby had 
requested Cheke's opinion of his work: — "Our own tongue 
should be written clean and pure, unmixed and unmangled with 
borrowing of other tongues ; wherein, if we take not heed, by 
time, ever borrowing and never paying, she shall be fain to keep 
her house as bankrupt. For then doth our tongue naturally and 



CHAP. I.] SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 31 

praisably utter her meaning when she borroweth no counterfeitness 
of other tongues to attire herself withal ; but used plainly her own, 
with such shift as nature, craft, experience, and following of other 
excellent, doth lead her unto; and if she want at any time (as, 
being imperfect, she must), yet let her borrow with such bash- 
fulness that i: may appear that, if either the mould of our own 
tongue could serve us to fashion a word of our own, or if the old 
denizened words could content and ease this need, we would not 
boldly venture on unknown words. This I say not for reproof 
of you, who have scarcely and necessarily used, where occasion 
seemeth, a strange word so as it seemeth to grow out of the matter, 
and not to be sought for; but for my own defence, M'ho might be 
counted overstraight a deemer of things if I gave not this account 
to you, my friend, of my marring this your handiwork." We 
find at this time innumerable complaints of the vast quantit}'' of 
foreign words imported, from a thousand different sources, into 
the English tongue; and it is curious to observe the struggles 
made, and made in vain, by the purists of this period, to establish 
some model or standard of style. In spite (or, perhaps, even in 
consequence) of these difficulties, the language was undoubtedly 
fixed and consolidated in the sixteenth century more effectually, 
perhaps, than in any other period of equal duration ; for we must 
reflect that in this age also is included the whole splendid reign 
of Elizabeth. 

As specimens of the most familiar and idiomatic English — the 
English of the lower orders — we may cite the wild and witty 
pasquinades of Skelton, who attacked Wolsey with such perse- 
vering temerity. The translation of the Scriptures is by many 
supposed to have strongly and beneficially influenced the language 
of this age, but Barrington attributes (and in our opinion justly) a 
much greater power of purifying and fixing the idiom to the pub- 
lic^ation of the statutes in English. Those noble and illustrious 
friends, Lord Surrey and Sir .John Wyatt, had a powerful influ- 
ence in the adorning of their native tongue, no less than Lord 
Berners, the translator of the Chronicles of Froissart. In the 
works of Roger Ascham, the learned preceptor of Elizabeth, we 
find the same dread of neologisms ; in short, almost every author 
of the times seems to be on his guard against that torrent of Ita- 
lianisms, Gallicisms, and Spanish terms, which was soon to invade 
the language — " tafl^eta phrases, silken terms precise." Arthur 
Golding, who wrote in 1565, thus complains: — 

" Our English tongue is driven almost out of kind, 
Disniember'd, hacli'd, maim'd, rent, and torn, 
Defaced, patch'd, marr'd, and made in scorn ;" 

and Carew, about 1580, informs us that, " within these sixty years 
we have incorporated so many Latin and French words as the 



33 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. 1. 

third part of our language consisteth in ihem." Spenser, in order 
to give (as a multitude of poets, ancient and modern, have striven 
to do) an air of antiquity to the language of his ' Faery Queen,' 
in harmony with the romantic chivalry of its subject, set the ex- 
ample — unhappily followed by many writers who had no such 
excuse as the English Ariosto — of reviving the obsolete diction of 
Chaucer; and Shakspeare, with that intuitive good taste which 
characterises the higher order of genius, levelled the keen and 
brilliant shafts of his ridicule against the fantastic Euphuism or 
Italianated pedantry of the court, exactly as Rabelais has gibbeted 
in immortal burlesque the " Pindarizing" Latinity of the pedants 
of his day, and Moliere has so cruelly immortalized the conceited 
jargon of the Hotel de Rambouillet. 

The influence, at this period, and even down to the end of the 
reign of Jsmes I,, of Italian manners and literature, was very 
great ; an influence which was occasionally mingled with tlie 
somewhat similar tone of Spanish society ; but this was after- 
wards to give place to a decided tendency towards a French taste 
in language, dress, and so on. During the stormy interval occu- 
pied by the Republic and Protectorate, men were too much occu- 
pied with graver and more pressing interests to cultivate literature 
with great ardour or success ; and even had this period been one 
of tranquil prosperity, the gloomy fanaticism of the times would 
have forbidden us to expect any improvement in the language. 
At a period when British senators would rise in Parliament to 
expound the Epistles of St. Paul, when the stage was suppressed, 
and serious propositions were made to paint all the churches black 
to typify the gloom and corruption that reigned within them, it 
was natural to lind the style of writers as mean as was the condi- 
tion of most of the rulers, as narrow as their intolerance, and as ex- 
travagant as their doctrines ; and perhaps one of the true causes of 
Milton's adoption of the singularly artificial, learned, and involved 
way of writing which characterises his prose works, was his con- 
tempt for the ignorance of most of the republican party, whose 
political opinions he shared, while he abhorred their vices and 
despised their bigotry. 

Phillips, the nephew and pupil of Milton, in the preface to his 
'Theatrum Poetarum,' a work which is without doubt deeply 
tinged with the literary taste and opinions of the author of the 
' Paradise Lost,' complains of the gradually increasing French taste 
which characterised our literature when he wrote, i. e. in 1675, 
in the reign of Charles II. " I cannot but look upon it as a very 
pleasant humour that we should be so compliant with the French 
custom as to follow set fashions, not only in garments, but iu 

music and poetry Now, whether the trunk-hose 

fashion of Queen Elizabeth's days, or the pantaloon genius of 



CHAP. I.] EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 33 

ours, be best, I shall not be hasty to determine." The cause of 
the great influx of Gallicisms which took place at the Restoration 
is undoubtedly to be found in the long exile of Charles II. during 
the stormy period of the Republic. Charles, and the few faithful 
adherents who composed his court, passed many of those years 
in France ; he was indeed a pensioner of Versailles. He there 
naturally acquired a taste for the artificial and somewhat formal 
refinements of French literature, much more active and permanent 
than any which he might have retained for the vernacular litera- 
ture of that nation which had brought his father to the block and 
compelled himself to encounter all the vicissitudes of poverty and 
exile. At his return to the kingdom of his ancestors, it was the 
court which gave, in a great measure, the tone to the rest of the 
nation ; and it is from this epoch, consequently, that we must date 
the commencement of that long influence exerted on English by 
French manners and modes of thinking. 

This influence is very perceptible in all our writers during the 
reigns of William, Anne, and the first three Georges: it is to this 
that we must attribute that faintness, dimness, and commonplace 
good sense which characterises, with occasional splendid excep- 
tions, the prose ; and that unimaginative and monotonous clas- 
sicism which marks the courtly school of poetry, and which was 
not to be supplanted by anything truly national and vigorous, till 
the glorious outburst of new forms and modes of thought and ex- 
pression in that splendid epoch illustrated by the contemporary 
names of Lord Byron, Scott, and Wordsworth. 

As to the elementary constitution of the English language as 
spoken and written in the present day, the following calculations 
may be found curious and instructive, and perhaps they may give 
a better notion of the present condition of the language than more 
general description. It has been ascertained that the English now 
consists of about 38,000 words, of which 23,000, or nearly^i;e- 
eighths, are Anglo-Saxon in their origin; and that in our mos^ 
idiomatic writers about nine-tenths are Anglo-Saxon, and in our 
least idiomatic writers about two-thirds. As examples of the 
most completely idiomatic authors, we may instance the immor- 
tal De Foe, and among those who are least Saxon perhaps Gibbon 
may, without injustice, be adduced. There can be no doubt, 
however, that the Anglo-Saxon element is slowly but perceptibly 
diminishing; and the learned Sharon Turner considers that one- 
fiflh of the Saxon language has ceased to be used. 



34 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cUAP. II. 



CHAPTER II. 

CHAUCER AND HIS TIMES. 

Age of Chaucer — His Birth and Education — Translation in the Fourtrenth Cen- 
tury — His Early Productions — His Career — Imbued with Provencal Literature 
— Character of his Poems — Romaunt of the Rose — Troilus and Cresseide — 
Anachronism — House of Fame — Canterbury Tales — Plan of this Work — The 
Pilgrims — Proposition of the Host — Plan of the Decameron — Superiority of 
Chaucer's Plan — Dialogue of the Pilgrims — Knight's Tale — Squire's Tale — 
Story of Griselda — Comic Tales — The two Prose Tales — Rime of Sir Thopas 
— Parson's Tale — Language of Chaucer — The Flower and the Leaf. 

Neither the plan nor the extent of the present volume will per- 
mit us to give a detailed history of all the productions, nor, indeed, 
even a list of all the names, which figure in the annals of English 
literature. It will be our aim to direct the reader's attention upon 
those great works and those illustrious names which form, as it 
were, the landmarks of the intellectual history of the country, and 
which gave the tone and colour to the various epochs to which 
they belong; exerting also, according to circumstances, an influ- 
ence more or less powerful on contemporary and succeeding 
generations. And by this method we hope to give a clearer idea 
of the scope and character of English literature than we could 
expect to afli'ord them by a more elaborate and detailed work, the 
materials for which are so abundant, that it would require not a 
volume but a library to develop them as they deserve. 

We consider, therefore, the age of Chaucer as the true starting- 
point of the English literature properly so called. In Italy letters 
appear to have revived after the long and gloomy period charac- 
terised by the somewhat false term of "the dark ages," with as- 
tonishing rapidity. Like germs and seeds of plants which have 
lain for centuries buried deep in the unfruitful bowels of the earth, 
and suddenly brought up by some convulsion of nature to the 
surface, the intellect of Italy burst forth, in the fourteenth century, 
into a tropical luxuriance, putting out its fairest flowers of poetry, 
and its solidest and most beautiful fruits of wisdom and of wit. 
Dante died seven years before, and Petrarch and Boccaccio about 
fifty years after, the birth of Chaucer, who thus was exposed to 
the strongest and directest influence of the genius of these great 
men. How great that influence was, we shall presently see. 
The great causes, then, which modified and directed the genius of 



CHAP, n.] TRANSLATION IN FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 35 

Chaucer were — first, the new Italian poetry, which tlien suddenly 
burst forth upon the world, like Pallas from the brain of Jupiter, 
perfect and consummate in its virgin strength and beauty ; second, 
the now decaying Romanz or Provencal poetry; and third, the 
doctrines of the Reformation, which were beginning, obscurely 
but irresistibly, to agitate the minds of men; a movement which 
took its origin, as do all great and permanent revolutions, in the 
lower depths of the popular heart, heaving gradually onwards, 
like the tremendous ground-swell of the equator, until it burst 
with resistless strength upon the Romish Church in Germany 
and in England, sweeping all before it. WicklifTe, who was born 
in 1324, only four years before Chaucer, had undoubtedly com- 
municated to the poet many of his bold doctrines ; the father of 
our poetry and the father of our reformed religion were both at- 
tached to the party of the celebrated John of Gaunt, and were 
both honoured with the friendship and protection of that power- 
ful prince: Chaucer indeed was the kinsman of the Earl, having 
married the sister of Catherine Svvinford, first the mistress and 
ultimately the wife of* time-honoured Lancaster;" and the poet's 
varied and uncertain career seems to have faithfully followed all 
the vicissitudes of John of Gaunt's eventful life. 

Geoffrey Chaucer was born, as he informs us himself, in Lon- 
don ; and for the date of an event so important to the destinies of 
English letters, we must fix it, on the authority of the inscription 
upon his tomb, as having happened in the year 1328 ; that is to say, 
at the commencement of the splendid and chivalrous reign of 
Edward IIL The honour of having been the place of his edu- 
cation has been eagerly disputed by the two great and ancient 
universities of Oxford and Cambridge ; the former, however, of 
the two learned sisters having apparently the best established right 
to the maternity — or at least the fosterage — of so illustrious a 
nurseling. Cambridge founds her claim upon the circumstance 
of Chaucer's having subscribed one of his early works "Philo- 
genet of Cambridge, clerk." He afterwards returned to London, 
and there became a student of the law. His detestation of the 
monks appears, from a very curious document, to have begun 
even so early as his abode in the grave walls of the Temple; for 
we find the name of Jeffrey Chancer inscribed in an ancient 
register as having been fined for the misdemeanour of beating a 
friar in Fleet Street. 

The first efforts of a revival of letters will always be made in 
the path of translation; and to this principle Chaucer forms no 
exce.ption. He was an indefatigable translator; and the whole 
of many — nay, a great part of «// — his works bears unequivocal 
traces of the prevailing taste for imitation. How much he has 
improved upon his models, what new lights he has placed them 



36 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. II. 

in, with what skill he has infused fresh life into the dry bones of 
obscure authors, it will hereafter be our business to inquire. He 
was the poetical pupil of Gower, and, like Raphael and Shaks- 
peare, he surpassed his master: Gower always speaks with 
respect of his illustrious pupil in the art of poetry; and, in his 
work entitled ' Confessio Aniantis,' places in the mouth of Venus 
the following elegant compliment: — 

" And grete wel Chaucer, when ye mete, 
As my disciple and my poete : 
For in the flowers of his youth, 
In sundry wise, as he well couthe, 
Of ditees and of songes glade 
The which he for my sake made," &c. 

These lines also prove that Chaucer began early to write; and 
probably our poet continued, during the whole course of his event- 
ful life, to labour assiduously in the fields of letters. 

His earliest works were strongly tinctured with the manner, 
nay, even with the mannerism, of the age. They are much 
fuller of allegory than his later productions ; they are distinguished 
by a greater parade of scholarship, and by a deeper tinge of that 
amorous and metaphysical mysticism which pervades the later 
Provencal poetry, and which reached its highest pitch of fantas- 
tical absurdity in the Arrets cV Amour of Picardy and Languedoc. 
As an example of this we may cite his 'Dream,' an allegorical 
composition written to celebrate the nuptials of his friend and 
patron Jolin of Gaunt, with Blanche, the heiress of Lancaster, 

Chaucer was in every sense a man of the world : he was the 
ornament of two of the most brilliant courts in the annals of 
England — those of Edward HI., and his successor Richard H. 
He also accompanied the former king in his expedition into 
France, and was taken prisoner about 1359 at the siege of Retters ; 
and in 1367 we find him receiving from the Crown a grant of 20 
marks, i. c. about 200/. of our present money. 

Our poet, thus distinguished as a soldier, as a courtier, and as a 
scholar, was honoured with the duty of forming part of an embassy 
to the splendid court of Genoa, where he was present at the nup- 
tials of Violante, daughter of Galeazzo Duke of Milan, with the 
Duke of Clarence. At this period he made the acquaintance of 
Petrarch, and probably of Boccaccio also : to the former of these 
illustrious men he certainly was personally known; for he hints, 
i n his ' Canterbury Tales,' his having learned from him the beauti- 
ful and pathetic tale of the Patient Griselda : — 

" Learnedat Padua of a worthy clerke, 
Francis Petrarke, the laureate poet, 
Ilighte ttiys clerke, whose rhetlinrique sweet 
Enlumined al Itaie of poesy." 



CHAP. 11.] Chaucer's disgrace and imprisonment. 37 

It was during his peregrinations in France and Italy that 
Chaucer drew at the fountain-head those deep draughts from the 
Hippocrene of Tuscany and of Provence which flow and sparkle 
in all his compositions. It is certain that he introduced into the 
English language an immense quantity of words absolutely and 
purely French, and that he succeeded with an admirable dexterity 
in harmonizing the ruder sounds of his vernacular tongue; so 
successfully, indeed, that it may be safely asserted that very few 
poets in any modern language are more exquisitely and uniformly 
musical than Chaucer. Indeed, he has been accused, and in 
rather severe terms, of having naturalized in English "a wagon- 
load of foreign words." 

In 1380 we find Chaucer appointed to the office of Clerk of 
the Works at Windsor, where he was charged with overlooking 
tlie repairs about to be made in St. George's Chapel, then in a 
ruinous condition. 

In 1383 Wickliffe completed his translation into the English 
language of the Bible, and his death, in the following year, seems 
to have been the signal for the commencement of a new and 
gloomy phase in the fortunes of the poet. Chaucer returned to 
England in J 386, and, the party to which he belonged having 
lost its political influence, he was imprisoned in the Tower, and 
deprived of the places and privileges which had been granted to 
him. Two years afterwards he was permitted to sell his patents, 
and in 1389 he appears to have been induced to abandon, and 
even to accuse, his former associates, of whose Ireacltery towards 
him he bitterly complains. 

In reward for,tiiis submission to the government, we afterwards 
find him restored to favour, and made, in the year 1389, Clerk of 
the Works at Westminster. It is at this period that he is sup- 
posed to have retired to pass the calm evening of his active life 
in the green shades of Woodstock, where he is related to have 
composed his admirable ' Canterbury Tales.' This production, 
though, according to many opinions, neither the finest nor even 
tiie most characieristicof Chaucer's numerous and splendid poems, 
is 3-et the one of them all#l)y which he is now best known: it 
is the work which has handed his name down to future genera- 
tions as the earliest glory of his country's literature; and as such 
it warrants us in appealing, from the perhaps partial judgments of 
isolated critics, to the sovereign tribunal of posterity. The deci- 
sions of contemporaries may be swayed by fashion and prejudice; 
the criticism of scholars may be tinged v.'ith partiality ; hut the 
unanimous voice of four iuindred and fifty years is sure to be a' 
true index of the relative value of a work of genius. 

Beautiful as are many of his other productions, it is the ' Can- 
terbury Tales' which have enshrined Chaucer in the penetralia of 
4 



38 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. 11. 

England's Glory Temple; it is to the wit, the pathos, the hu- 
manity, the chivalry of those Tales that our minds recur when 
our ear is struck with the venerable name of Chaucer. In 1390 
we find the poet receiving the honourable charge of Clerk of the 
Works at Windsor; and, two years later, a grant from the Crown 
of 20/. and a tun of wine annually. Towards the end of the cen- 
tury which his illustrious name had adorned, he appears to have 
fallen into some distress; for another document is in existence 
securing to the poet the protection of the Crown (probably against 
importunate creditors); and in 1399 we find the poet's name 
inserted in the lease of a house holden from the Abbot and Chapter 
of Westminster, and occupying the spot upon which was after- 
wards erected Henry VII. 's Chapel, now forming one of the 
most brilliant ornaments of Westminster Abbey. In this house, as 
is with great probability conjectured, Chaucer died, on the 2.5th of 
October, 1400, and was buried in the Abbey, being the first of that 
long array of mighty poets whose bones repose with generations 
of kings, warriors, and statesmen beneath the " long-drawn aisles" 
of our national Walhalla. 

In reading the works of this poet the qualities which cannot 
fail to strike us most are — admirable truth, freshness, and Hving- 
ness of his descriptions of external nature ; profound knowledge 
of human life in the delineation of character; and that all-embrac- 
ing humanity of heart which makes him, as it makes the reader, 
sympathize with all God's creation, taking away from his humour 
every taste of bitterness and sarcasm. This humour, coloured 
by and springing from universal sympathy, this noblest humanity 
— we mean humanity in the sense of Terence's: "homo sum; 
liumani nihil a me alienum puto" — is the heritage of only the 
greatest among mankind ; and is but an example of that deep truth 
which Nature herself has taught us, when she placed in the hu- 
man heart the spring of Laughter fast by the fountain of Tears. 

We shall now proceed to examine the principal poems of Chau- 
cer, in the hope of presenting to our readers some scale or mea- 
sure of the gradual development of those powers which appear, 
at least to us, to have reached their highest apogee or exaltation 
in the ' Canterbury Tales.' 

In the first work to which we shall turn our attention, Chaucer 
has given us a translation of a poem esteemed by all French 
critics the noblest monument of their poetical literature anterior 
to the time of Francis I. This is the ' Romaunt of the Rose,' a. 
beautiful mixture of allegory and narrative, of which we shall 
presently give an outline in the words of Warton. The ' Roman 
de la Rose' was commenced by William de Lorris, who died in 
1260, and completed, in 1310, by Jean de Meun, a witty and 
satirical versifier, who was one of the ornaments of the brilliant 



CHAP. II.] CHAUCER: ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE. 39 

court of Charles le Bel. Chaucer has translated the whole of the 
portion composed by the former, together with some of Meun's 
continuation ; making, as he goes on, innumerable improvements 
in the text, which, where it harmonizes with his own conceptions, 
he renders with singular fidelity. " The difficulties and dangers 
of a lover, in pursuing and obtaining the object of his desires, 
are the literal argument of the poem. The design is couched 
under the allegory of a rose, which our lover, after frequent ob- 
stacles, gathers in a delicious garden. He traverses vast ditches, 
scales lofty walls, and forces the gates of adamantine castles. 
These enchanted holds are all inhabited by various divinities ; 
some of which assist, and some oppose, the lover's progress." 
The English poem is written, like the French original, in the short 
rhymed octosyllabic couplets so universally adopted by the Trou- 
veres, a measure well fitted, from its ease and flowingness, for the 
purpose of long narratives. We have said that the translation is 
in most cases very close; Chaucer was so far from desiring to 
make his works pass for original when they had no claim to this 
qualification, that he even specifies, with great care and with even 
a kind of exultation, the sources from whence his productions are 
derived. Indeed, at such early periods in the literature of any 
country, writers seem to attach as great or greater dignity to the 
oflice of translator than to the more arduous duty of original 
composition ; the reason of which probably is, that in the child- 
hood of nations as well as of men learning is a rarer, and there- 
fore more admired, quality than imagination. 

The allegorical personages in the'Romaunt of the Rose' are 
singularly varied, rich, and beautiful. Sorrow, Envy, Avarice, 
Hate, Beauty, Franchise, Richesse, are successively brought on 
the stage. As an example of the remarks we have just been 
making, we will quote a short passage from the latter part of 
Chaucer's translation, i. e. from that portion of the poem com- 
posed by John of Meun : it describes the attendants in the palace 
of Old Age : we will print the original French beside the extract : — 

" Travaile et douleur la liebergent, " With her, Labour and eke Travaile 

Mais ils la lient et la chargent, Lodgid bene, with sorwe and wo, 

Que Mort prochaine luy presentent, That nevir out of her court go. 
En talant de se repentir ; Pain and Distress, Sekenesse and Ire, 

Tant luy sont de fleaux sentir; And Melancholic that angry sire, 

Adojicq luy vienten remembraunce, Ben of her palais Senatoures; 
En cest tardifve presence, Groningand Grutchingher herbegeors, 

Quand 11 se volt foible et chenue." The day and night her to tourment, 

With cruel death they her present, 
And tellen her erliche and late. 
That Deth standith armid at her gate." 

Here Chaucer's improvements are plainly perceptible ; the intro- 
duction of Death, standing armed at the gate, is a grand and 
sublime thought, of which no trace is to be found in the com- 



40 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. 11. 

pavatively flat original; not to mention the terrible distinctness 
with which Chaucer enumerates Old Age's Senators, Pain, Dis- 
tress, Sickness, Ire, and Melancholy ; and her grim chamberlains, 
Groaning and Grudging. 

The next poem which we shall mention is the love-story en- 
titled ' Troilus and Cresseide,' founded on one of the most favour- 
ite legends of the Middle Ages, and which Shakspeare himself has 
dramatized in the tragedy of the same name. The anachronism 
of placing the scene of such a history of chivalric love in the 
heroic age of the Trojan War is, we think, more than compensated 
by the pathos; the nature, and the variety which characterize 
many of the ancient romances on this subject. Chaucer informs 
us that his authority is Lollius, a mysterious personage very often 
referred to by the writers of the Middle Ages, and so impossible 
to discover and identify that he must be considered as the Ignis 
Fatuus of antiquaries. " Of Lollius," says one of these unhappy 
and baffled investigators, " it will become every one to speak 
with deference." The whole poem is saturated with the spirit 
not of the Ionian rhapsodist, but of the Proven9al minstrel. It is 
written in the rhymed ten-syllabled couplet, which Chaucer has 
used in the greater part of his works. In the midst of a thousand 
anachronisms, of a thousand absurdities, this poem contains some 
strokes of pathos which are invariably to be found in everything 
Chaucer wrote, and which show that his heart ever vibrated re- 
sponsive to the touch of nature. 

Though we propose, in a future volume, to give such speci- 
mens and extracts of Chaucer as may suffice to enable our readers 
to judge of his manner, we cannot abstain from citing here a most 
exquisite passage : it describes the bashfulness and hesitation of 
Cressida before she can find courage to make the avowal of her 
love : — 

" And ns the newe-abashed nightingale 
That stinteth first, when slie beginneth sing. 
When that she hearctli any herdis tale. 
Or in the hedgis any wight stirring, 
And after sikerdoth her voice outring; 
Right so Cresseide, when that herdrede stent. 
Opened her herte and told him her entent." 

We may remark here the extraordinary fondness for the song 
of birds exhibited by Chaucer in all his works. There is not 
one of the English poets, and certainly none of the poets of any 
other nation, who has shown a more intense enjoyment for this 
natural music: he seems to omit no opportunity of describing the 
" doulx ramaige" of these feathered poets, whose accents seem 
to be echoed in all their delicacy, their purity and fervour, in the 
fresh strains of "our Father Chaucer:" — 



CHAP. II.] CHAUCER: HOUSE OF FAME. 41 

" Sound of vernal showers 
On the twinkling grass, 
Rain-awakened flowers, 
All that ever was 
Joyous and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass!" 

We have mentioned the anachronism of plan in this poem ; 
it abounds in others no less extraordinary. Among these, he 
represents Cresseide as reading the Thebaid of Statins (a very- 
favourite book of Chaucer), which he calls 'The Romance of 
Thebis ;' and Pandarus endeavours to comfort Troilus with argu- 
ments of predestination taken from Bishop Bradwardine, a theo- 
logian nearly contemporary with the poet. 

The ' House of Fame,' a magnificent allegory, glowing with all 
the "barbaric pearl and gold" of Gothic imagination, is the next 
work on which we shall remark. Its origin was probably Pro- 
vencal, but the poem which Chaucer translated is now lost. We 
will condense the argument of this poem from Warton : — "The 
poet, in a vision, sees a temple of glass decorated with an unac- 
countable number of golden images. On the walls are engraved 
stories from Virgil's Eneid and Ovid's Epistles. Leaving this 
temple, he sees an eagle with golden wings soaring near the sun. 
The bird descends, seizes the poet in its talons, and conveys him 
to the Temple of Fame, which, like that of Ovid, is situated be- 
tween earth and sea. He is left by the eagle near the house, which 
is built of materials bright as polished glass, and stands on a rock 
of ice. All the southern side of this rock is covered with engrav- 
ings of the names of famous men, which are perpetually melting 
away by the heat of the sun. The northern side of the rock was 
alike covered with names; but, being shaded from the warmth of 
the sun, the characters here remained unmelted and uneffaced. 
Within the niches formed in the pinnacles stood all round the 
castle 

' All manere of minstrellis, 
And gestours, that tellen tales 
Both of weping and eke of game :' 

and the most renowned harpers — Orpheus, Arion, Chiron, and 
the Briton Glaskeirion. In the hall he meets an infinite multitude 
of heralds, on whose surcoats are embroidered the arms of the 
most redoubted champions. At the upper end, on a lofty shrine 
of carbuncle, sits Fame. Her figure is like those of Virgil and 
Ovid. Above her, as if sustained on her shoulders, sate Alex- 
ander and Hercules. From the throne to the gates of the hall 
ran a range of pillars with respective inscriptions. On the 
first pillar, made of lead and iron, stood Josephus the Jewish his- 
torian, with seven other writers on the same subject. On the 
second, made of iron, and painted with the blood of tigers, stood 

4* 



42 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. CcHAP. H. 

Statins. On another, higher than the rest, stood Homer, Dares 
Phrygius, Livy, Lolliiis, Guido of Colonna, and Geoffrey of 
Monmouth, writers on the Trojan story. On a pillar of ' tinnid 
iron clere' stood Virgil; and next him, on a pillar of copper, ap- 
peared Ovid. The figure of Lucan was placed upon a pillar of 
iron ' wrought full sternly,' accompanied by many Roman his- 
torians. On a pillar of sulphur stood Claudian. The hall is 
filled by crowds of minor authors. In the mean time crowds of 
every nation and condition till the temple, each presenting his 
claim to the queen. A messenger is sent to summon Eohis from 
his cave in Thrace, who is ordered to bring his two clarions 
Slander and Praise, and his trumpeter Triton. The praises of 
each petitioner are then sounded, according to the partial or ca- 
pricious appointment of Fame; and equal merits obtain very dif- 
ferent success. The poet then enters the house or labyrinth of 
Rumour. It was built of willow twigs, like a cage, and therefore 
admitted every sound. From this house issue tidings of every 
kind, like fountains and rivers from the sea. Its inhabitants, who 
are eternally employed in hearing or telling news, raising reports, 
and spreading lies, are then humorously described : they are 
chielly sailors, pilgrims, and pardoners. At length our author is 
awakened by seeing a venerable person of great authority ; and 
thus the vision abruptly terminates." From the few lines we 
liave quoted, it may be seen that this poem, like the ' Romaunt 
of the Rose,' is written in the octosyllabic measure. Though I'ldl 
of extravagances, exaggerations of the already too monstrous per- 
sonitications of Ovid, this work extorts our admiration by the in- 
exhaustible richness and splendour of its ornaments ; a richness 
as perfectly in accordance with Middle Age art, as it is extrava- 
gant and puerile in the tinsel pages of the Roman poet. That 
multiplicity of parts and profusion of minute embellishment which 
forms the essential characteristic of a Gothic cathedral is displaced 
and barbarous when introduced into the severer outlines of a 
Grecian temple or a Roman amphitheatre. 

It now becomes our delightful duty to speak of the ' Canterbury 
Tales ;' and we can hardly trust ourselves to confine within rea- 
sonable limits the examination of this admirable work, containing 
in itself, as it docs, merits of the most various and opposite kinds. 
It is a finished picture, delineating almost every variety of human 
character, crowded with figures, whose lineaments no lapse of 
time, no change of manners, can render faint or indistinct, and 
Mhich will retain, to the latest centuries, every stroke of outline 
and every tint of colour, as sharp and as vivid as when they came 
from the master's hand. The Pilgrims of Chaucer have tra- 
versed four hundred and fifty years — like the Israelites wan- 
dering in the Wilderness — arid periods of neglect and ignorance, 



CHAP. II. n CIIALCER: CANTERBURY TALES. 43 

sandy flats of formal mannerism, unfertilised by any spring of 
beauty, and yet " their garments have not decayed, neither have 
their shoes waxed old." 

Besides the lively and faithful delineation — i. e. descriptive de- 
lineation — of these personages, nothing can be more dramatic 
than the way in which they are set in motion, speaking and act- 
ing in a manner always conformable to their supposed characters, 
and mutually heightening and contrasting each other's peculiari- 
ties. Furtlier yet, besides these triumphs in the framing of his 
Tales, the Tales themselves, distributed among the various pil- 
grims of his troop, are, in almost every case, masterpieces of 
splendour, of pathos, or of drollery. 

Chaucer, in the Prologue to the 'Canterbury Tales,' relates 
that he was about to pass the night at the "Tabarde" inn in 
Southwark, previous to setting out on a pilgrimage to the far-famed 
shrine of St. Thomas of Kent — i. e. Thomas a Becket — at Can- 
terbury. On the evening preceding the poet's departure there 
arrive at the hostelry — 

" Wei nine and twenty in a compagnie 
Ofsondry folk,, by avantiire y-falle 
In felawship, and pilgrimes wer they alle, 
That toward Canterbury wolden ride." 

The poet, glad of the opportunity of travelling in such good 
company, makes acquaintance with them all, and the party, after 
jnuiually promising to start early in the morning, sup and retire 
to rest. 

Ciiaucer then gives a full and minute description, yet in in- 
credibly few words, of the condition, appearance, manners, dress, 
and horses of the pilgrims. He first depicts a knight, "brave in 
battle, and wise in council," courteous, grave, religious, expe- 
rienced ; who had fought for the faith in far lands, at Algesiras, at 
Alexandria, in Russia : a model of the chivalrous virtues : — 

" And though that he was worthy, he was wise. 
And ofjiis port as meke as is a mayde. 
He was a veray parlit gentle knight." 

He is mounted on a good, though not showy, horse, and clothed 
in a simple gipon or close tunic, of serviceable materials, charac- 
teristically stained and discoloured by the friction of his armour. 
This valiant and modest gentleman is accompanied by his son, 
a perfect specimen of the damoyseau or "bachelor" of this, or 
of the graceful and gallant youth of noble blood in any period. 
Chaucer seems to revel in the painting of his curled and shining 
locks — "as they were laid in presse" — of his tall and active per- 
son, of his already-shown bravery, of his "love-longing," of his 
youthful accomplishments, and of his gay and fantastic dress. 
His talent for music, his short embroidered gown with long wide 



4d OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [ciIAP. II. 

sleeves (the fashion of the day), liis perfect horsemanship, his 
skill in song-making, in illuminating and writing, his hopeful and 
yet somewhat melancholy love for his "lady," — 

" So bote he loved, that by nightertale 
He slept no more than doth the nightingale — " 

nothing is omitted ; not a stroke too few or too many. 

This attractive pair are attended by a Yeman or retainer. This 
figure is a perfect portrait of one of those bold and sturdy archers, 
the type of the ancient national character; a type which still exists 
in the plain independent peasantry of the rural districts of the 
land. He is clad in the picturesque costume of the greenwood, 
with his sheaf of peacock arrows bright and keen stuck in his 
belt, and bearing in his hand "a mighty bowe" — the far-famed 
"long-bow" of the English archers — the most formidable weapon 
of the Middle Ages, which twanged such fatal music to the chi- 
valry of France at Poictiers and Agincourt. His " not-hed," his 
" brown visage," tanned by sun and wind, his sword and buckler, 
his sharp and well-equipped dagger, the silver medal of St. 
Christopher on his breast, the horn in the green baldric — how 
life-like does he stand before us ! 

These three figures are admirably contrasted with a Prioress, 
a lady of noble birtli and delicate bearing, full of the pretty afl'ec- 
tations, the dainty tendernesses of the " grande dame religieuse." 
Her name is " Madame Eglantine ;" and the mixture, in her 
manners and costume, of gentle worldly vanities and of ignorance 
of the world ; her gaiety, and the ever-visible difficulty she feels 
to put on an air of courtly hauteur ; the ladylike delicacy of her 
manners at table, and her fondness for petting lap-dogs, — 

" Of smale houndes had she, that she fed 

With rested flesh, and milk, and vvastel-bread. 
But sore she wept if on of hem were dead, 
Or if men smote it with a yerde smert. 
For al was conscience, and lender herte," 

this masterly outline is most appropriately /rfmieJ (if we may so 
speak) in the external and material accompaniments — the beads 
of "smale corall" hanging on her arm, and, above all, the golden 
brooch with its delicate device of a " crowned A," and the inscrip- 
tion Jimor vinclt omnia. She is attended by an inferior Nun 
and three Priests. 

The Monk follows next, and he, like all the ecclesiastics, with 
the single exception of tlie Personore or secular parish priest, is 
described with strong touches of ridicule ; but it is impossible not 
to perceive the strong and ever-present humanity of which we 
have spoken as perhaps the most marked characteristic of Chau- 
cer's mind. The Monk is a gallant, richly-dressed, and pleasure- 
loving sportsman, caring not a straw for the obsolete strictness of 



CHAP. II.] CHAUCER: CANTERBURY TALES. 45 

ihe musty rule of his order. His sleeves are edged vvilli rich fur, 
his hood fastened under#iis cliin with a gold pin headed with a 
" love-knot," his eyes are buried deep in his fleshy rosy cheeks, 
indicating great love of rich fare and potent wines ; and yet the 
impression left on the mind by this type of fat royslering sensu- 
ality is rather one of drollery and good-fellowship than of contempt 
or abhorrence. 

Chaucer exhibits rich specimens of the various genera of that 
vast species " Monacluis monachans," as it may be classed by 
some Rabeloesian Theophrastus. The next personage who enters 
is the Frere, or mendicant friar, whose easiness of confession, 
wonderful skill in extracting money and gifts, and gay discourse 
are most humorously and graphically described. He is repre- 
sented as always carrying store of knives, pins, and toys, to give 
to his female penitents, as better acquainted with the tavern than 
with the lazar-house or the hospital, daintily dressed, and "lisping 
somewhat" in his speech, " to make his English swete upon the 
tonge." 

This " worthy Liinitour" is succeeded by a grave and formal 
personage, the Meri'.iant : solemn and wise is he, with forked 
beard and pompous demeanour, speaking much of profit, and 
strongly in favour of the king's right to the subsidy " pour la sauf- 
garde et custodie del mer," as the old Norman legist phrases it. 
He is dressed in motley, mounted ou a tall and quiet horse, and 
wears a " Flaundrish beaver hat." 

The learned poverty of the Gierke of Oxenforde forms a strik- 
ing contrast to the Merchant's rather pompous "respectability." 
He and his horse are " leane as is a rake" with abstinence, his 
clothes are threadbare, and he devotes to the purchase of his be- 
loved books all the gold which he can collect from his friends and 
patrons, devoutly praying, as in duty bound, for the souls of those 
" WJo yeve him wherevyith to scolaie." 

Nothing can be more true to nature than the mixture of pedantry 
and bashfulness in the manners of this anchoret of learning, and 
the tone of sententious morality and formal politeness which marks 
his language. 

We now come to a " Serjeant of the liawe," a wise and learned 
magistrate, rich and yet irreproachable, with all the statutes at his 
fingers' ends, a very busy man in reality, " but yet," not to forget 
the inimitable touch of nature in Chaucer, " he seemed besier than 
he was." He is plainly dressed, as one who cares not to display 
his importance in his exterior. 

Nor are the preceding characters superior, in vividness and 
variety, to the figure of the " Frankelein," or rich country-gentle- 
man, who is next introduced : his splendid and hospitable profu- 



46 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. II. 

sion, and the epicurean luxnriousness of the man himself, are 
inimitably set before us. " It snewed h^ his house of mete and 
drink." 

Then come a number of burgesses, whose appearance is classed 
under one general description. These are a Haberdasher, Car- 
penter, Webbe (or Weaver), Dyer, and Tapiser — 
-Alle yclothed of o liverfe, 



Of a solempne and gret fraternitfe," — 

that is, they all belong to one of those societies, or mestiers, 
which play so great a part in the municipal history of the Middle 
Ages, The somewhat cossu richness of their equipment, their 
knives hafted with silver, their grave and citizen-like bearing — 
all is in harmony with the pride and vanity, hinted at by the poet, 
of their wives, who think " it is full fayre to be ycleped Madame.^'' 

The skill and critical discernment of the Cook are next de- 
scribed : " Well could he know a draught of London ale," and 
elaborately could he season the rich and fantastic dishes which 
composed the "carte" of the fourteenth century. He joins the 
pilgrimage in hope that his devotion may cure him of a disease 
in the leg. 

A turbulent and boisterous Shipman appears next, who is de- 
scribed with minute detail. His brown complexion, his rude 
and quarrelsome manners, his tricks of trade, stealing wine " from 
Burdeux ward, while that the chapman slepe," all is enumerated ; 
nor does the poet forget the seaman's knowledge of all the havens 
" from Gothland to the Cape de Finisterre," nor his experience in 
his profession : " In many a tempest had his herd be shake." 

He is followed by a Doctour of Phisike, a great astronomer 
and natural magician, deeply versed in the ponderous tomes of 
Hippocrates, Hali, Galen, Rhasis, Averrhoes, and the Arabian 
physicians. His diet is but small in quantity, but rich and 
nourishing; " Ais study is but little on the Bible ;''^ and he is 
humorously represented as particularly fond of gold, '•'■ for gold in 
phisike is a cordiall.''^ 

Next to the grave, luxurious, and not quite orthodox Doctor 
enters the " Wife of Bath," a daguerreotyped specimen of the 
female bourgeoise of Chaucer's day ; and bearing so perfectly 
the stamp and mark of her class, that by changing her costume 
a little to the dress of the nineteenth century, she would serve as 
a perfect sample of her order even in the present day. Siie is 
equipped with a degree of solid costliness that does not exclude 
a little coquetry ; her character is gay, bold, and not over rigid ; 
and she is endeavouring, by long and frequent pilgrimages, to ex- 
piate some of the amorous errors of her youth. She is a sub- 
stantial manufacturer of cloth, and so jealous of her precedency in 
the religious ceremonies of her parish, that, if any of her female 



CHAP. II.] CHAUCER: CANTERBURY TALES. 47 

acquaintance should venture to go before her on these solemn 
occasions, "so wroth was she, that she was out of alle charitee." 
Contrasted with this rosy dame are two of the most beautiful 
and touching portraits ever delineated by the hand of genius — 
one " a poure Persoune," or secular parish priest ; and his bro- 
ther in simplicity, virtue, and evangelic purity, a Plowman. It is 
in these characters, and particularly in the " Tale" put into the 
mouth of the former that we most distinctly see Chaucer's sym- 
pathy with the doctrines of the Reformation : the humility, self- 
denial, and charity of these two pious and worthy men, are op- 
posed with an unstudied, but not the less striking pointedness, to 
the cheatery and sensuality which distinguish all the monks and 
friars represented by Chaucer. So beautiful and so complete is 
this noble delineation of Christian piety, that we will not venture 
to injure its effect by quoting it piecemeal in this place, but refer 
our readers to the volume of extracts, in which the whole of 
Chaucer's Prologue will be found at length. 

Then we find enumerated a Reve, a Miller, a Sompnour (an 
officer in the ecclesiastical courts), a Pardoner, a Manciple, and 
" myself," that is, Chaucer. 

The Miller is a brawny, short, red-headed fellow, strong, 
boisterous and quarrelsome, flat-nosed, wide-mouthed, debauched ; 
he is dressed in a while coat and blue hood, and armed with 
sword and buckler. 

His conversation and conduct correspond faithfully with such 
an appearance: he enlivens the journey by his skill in playing 
on the bagpipe. 

The Manciple was an officer attached to the ancient colleges; 
his duty was to purchase the provisions and other commodities for 
the consumption of the students; in fact, he was a kind of stew- 
ard. Chaucer describes this pilgrim as singularly adroit in the 
exercise of his business, taking good care to advantage himself 
the while. 

Another of the most elaborately painted pictures in Chaucer's 
gallery is the " Reve," bailiff^, or intendant of some great propri- 
etor's estates. He stands before us as a slender, long-legged, 
choleric individual, with his beard shaven as close as possible, 
and his hair exceedingly short. He is a severe and watchful 
manager of his master's estates, and had grown so rich that he 
was able to come to his lord's assistance, and "lend him. of his 
ovvne good." His horse he described, and even named, and he 
is described as always riding " the hinderest of the route." 

Nothing can surpass the nature and truthfulness with which 
Chaucer has described the Sompnour. His face is fiery red, as 
cherubim were painted, and so covered with pimples, spots, and 
discoloraiions, that neither mercury, sulphur, borax, nor any pu- 



48 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. II. 

rifying ointment, could cleanse his complexion. He is a great 
lover of onions, leeks, and garlick, and fond of " strong win as 
red as blood;" and when drunk he would speak nothing but 
Latin, a few terms of which language he had picked up from the 
writs and citations it was his profession to serve. He is a great 
laker of bribes, and will allow any man to set at nought the arch- 
deacon's court in the most flagrant manner " for a quart of wine." 

The last of the pilgrims is the " Pardonere," or seller of in- 
dqlgences from Rome. He is drawn to the life, singing, to the 
bass of his friend the Sompnour, the song of " Come hither, love, 
to me." The Pardoner's hair is "yellow as wax," smooth and 
thin, lying on his shoulders : he wears no hood, " for joUite," — 
that is, in order to appear in the fashion. His eyes (as is often 
found in persons of this complexion — note Chaucer's truth to 
nature) are wide and staring like those of a hare: his voice is a 
liarsh treble, like that of a goat; and he has no beard. Chaucer 
then enumerates the various articles of the Pardoner's professional 
budget ; and certainly there never was collected a list of droller 
relics: he has Our Lady's veil, a morsel of the sail of St. Paul's 
ship, a glass full of "pigges bones," and a pewter cross crammed 
with other objects of equal sanctity. With the aid of these and 
the hypocritical unction of his address, he could manage, in one 
day, to extract from poor and rustic people more money than the 
Parson (the regular pastor of the parish) could collect in two 
months. 

The number of the pilgrims now enunie.....'d will be found by 
any one who takes the trouble to count them to amount to thirty- 
one, including Chaticer ; and the poet descril)es them setting out 
on their journey on the following morning. Before their depart- 
ure, however, the jolly Host of the Tabarde makes a proposition 
to the assembled company. He offers to go along with them 
himself, on condition that they constitute him a kind of master of 
the revels during their journey ; showing hctw agreeably and pro- 
fitably they could beguile the tedium of the road with the relation 
of stories. He then proposes that on their return they should 
all sup together at his hostelry, and that he among them who 
shall have been adjudged to have told the best story should be 
entertained at the expense of the whole sociity. This proposal 
is unanimously adopted ; and nothing can be liner than the mix- 
lure of fun and good sense with which honest Harry Bailey, the 
Host, sways the merry sceptre of his temporary sovereignty. 

This then is ib.e framework or scaffolding on which Chaucer 
has erected his Canterbury Tales. The practice of connecting 
together a multitude of distinct narrations by some general thread 
of incident is very natural and extremely ancient. The Orien- 
tals, so passionately fond of tale-telling, have universally — and not 



CHAP. II.] CHAUCER: CANTERBURY TALES. 49 

alwnys very artificially — given consistency and connection to their 
stories by putting them inii the mouth of some single narrator: 
the various histories which ■ mpose the Thousand and One Nights 
are supposed to besuccessivriy recounted by the untiring lips of" the 
inexhaustible Princess Scheherezade; but the source from whence 
Chaucer more immediately adopted h\s framing was the Deca- 
meron of Boccaccio. This work (as it may be necessary to in- 
form our younger readers) consists of a hundred tales divided 
inio decades, each decade occupying one day in the relation. 
They are narrated by a society of young men and women of 
rank, who have shut themselves up in a most luxurious and beau- 
tiful retreat on the banks of the Arno, in order to escape the in- 
fection of the terrible plague tlien ravaging Florence. 

If we compare the plan of Chaucer with that of the Florentine, 
we shall not hesitate to give the palm of propriety, probability, 
and good taste to the English poet. A pilgrimage was by no 
means an expedition of a mournful or solemn kind, and afforded 
the i^'.hor the widest field for the selection of character from all 
classes of society, and an excellent opportunity for the divers 
hum.".jrs and oddities of a company fortuitously assembled. It 
is impossible, too, not to feel that there is something cruel and 
shocking in the notion of these young luxurious Italians of Boc- 
caccio whiling away their days in tales of sensual trickery or 
sentimental distress, while without the well-guarded walls of their 
retreat thousands of their kinsmen and fellow-citizens were writh- 
ing in despairing agony. Moreover, the similarity of rank and 
age in the personages of Boccaccio produces an insipidity and 
want of variety : all these careless voluptuaries are repetitions of 
Dioneo and Fiammetta: and the period of ten days adopted by 
the Ilalian has the defect of being purely arbitrary, there being no 
reason why the narratives might not be continued indefinitely. 
Chaucer's Pilgrimage, on the contrary, is made to Canterbury, 
and occupies a certain and necessary time ; and, on the return 
of the travellers, the society separates as naturally as it had as- 
sembled ; after giving the poet the opportunity of introducing two 
striking and appropriate events — their procession to the shrine of 
St. Thomas at their arrival in Canterbury, and the prize-supper 
on their return to London. 

Had Chaucer adhered to his original plan, we should have had 
a tale from each of the party on the journey out, and a second 
tale from every pilgrim on tlie way back, making in all sixty-two 
— or, if the Host also contributed his share, sixty-four. But, 
alas! the poet has not conducted his pilgrims even to Canterbury; 
and the tales which he has made them tell only make us the 
more bitterly lament the non-fulfilment of liis original intention. 
5 



50 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATPRE. [cHAP. II. 

Before we speak of the narratives themselves, it will be pro- 
per to state that our poet continues to describe the actions, con- 
versation, and deportment of his pilgrims: and noihins can be 
finer than the remarks put into their mouths respecting the merits 
of the various tales ; or more dramatic than the affected bashful- 
ness of some, when called upon to contribute to the amusement 
of their companions, and the squabbles and satirical jests made 
by others. 

These passages, in which the tales themselves are, as it were, 
incrusted, are called Prologues to the various narratives which 
ihey respectivelv precede, and they add inexpressibly to the viva- 
city and movement of the whole, as in some cases the tales spring, 
as it were, spontaneously out of the conversations. 

Of the tales themselves it will be impossible to attempt even a 
rapid summary: we may mention, as the most remarkable among 
the serious and pathetic narratives, the Knight's Tale, the subject 
of which is the beautiful story of Palamon and Arcite, taken from 
the Teseide of Boccaccio, but it is unknown whether originally 
invented by the sreat Italian, or, as is far more probable, imitated 
by him from some of the innumerable versions of the "noble 
story" of Theseus current in the Middle Ages. The poem is 
full of a strange mixture of manners and periods : the chivalric and 
the heroic ages appear side by side : but such is the splendour of 
imagination displayed in this immortal work, so rich is it in mag- 
nificence, in pathos, in exquisite delineations of character, and 
artfully contrived turns of fortune, that the reader voluntarily 
dismisses all his chronology, and allows himself to be carried 
awav with the fresh and sparkling current of chivalric love and 
knightly adventure. No reader ever began this poem without 
finishing it, or ever read it once without returning to it a second 
time. The effect upon the mind is like that of some gorgeous 
tissue, gold-inwoven, of tapestry, in an old baronial hall; full of 
tournaments and battles, imprisoned knights, and emblazoned 
banners, Gothic temples of Mars and Venus, the lists, the dungeon 
and the lady's bower, garden and fountain, and moonlit groves. 
Chaucer's peculiar skillin the delineation of character and appear- 
ance by a few rapid and masterly strokes is as perceptible here 
as in the Prologue to the Tales: the procession of the kings to 
the tournament is as bright and vivid a piece of painting as ever 
was prodrced by the "strong braine" of mediaeval Art: and in 
point of grace and simplicity, what can be finer than the single 
line descriptive of the beauty of Emilie — so suggestive, and 
therefore so superior to the most elaborate portrait — '* Up rose 
the sun, and up rose Emelie" ' 

The next poem of a serious character is the Squire's Tale, 
which indeed so struck the admiration of Milton — himself pro- 



CHAP. II.] CHAUCER: CANTERBURY TALES. 51 

foundly penetrated by the spirit of the Romanz poetry — that it is 
by an allusion to the Squire's Tale that he characterizes Chaucer 
when enumerating the great men of all ages, and when he places 
him beside Plato, Shakspeare, ^Eschylus, and his beloved Euri- 
pides: he supposes his Cheerful Man as evoking Chaucer: — 

" And call up him who left half told 
The story of Cambuscan bold." 

The imagery of the Squire's Tale was certainly well calculated 
to strike such a mind as Milton's, so gorgeous, so stately, so 
heroic, and imbued with all the splendour of Oriental literature ; 
for the scenery and subject of this poem bear evident marks of 
that Arabian influence which colours so much of the poetry of 
the Middle Ages, and which probably began to act upon the 
literature of Western Europe after the Crusades. 

In point of deep pathos — pathos carried indeed to an extreme 
and perhaps hardly natural or justifiable pitch of intensity — we 
will now cite, among the graver tales of our pilgrims, the story 
put into the mouth of the Clerke of Oxenforde. This is the story 
of the Patient Griselda — a model of womanly and wifely obe- 
dience, who comes victoriously out of the most cruel and repeated 
ordeals inflicted upon her conjugal and maternal affections. The 
beautiful and angelic figure of the Patient Wife in this heart-rend- 
ing story reminds us of one of those seraphic statues of Virgin 
Martyrs which stand with clasped hands and uplifted, imploring 
eye, in the carved niches of a Gothic cathedral — an eternal prayer 
in sculptured stone, — 

Patience, on a monument, 



Smiling at Grief!' 

The subject of this tale is, as we mentioned some pages back, in- 
vented by Boccaccio, and first seen in 1374, by Petrarch, who 
was so struck with its beauty that he translated it into Latin, and 
it is from this translation that Chaucer drew his materials. The 
English poet indeed appears to have been ignorant of Boccaccio's 
claim to the authorship, for he makes his "Clerke" say that he 
had learned it from " Fraunceis Petrarke, the laureat poete." Pe- 
trarch himself bears the strongest testimony to the almost over- 
whelming pathos of the story, for he relates that he gave it to a 
Paduan acquaintance of his to read, who fell into a repeated agony 
of passionate tears. Chaucer's poem is written in \he Italian 
stanza. 

Of the comic tales the following will be found the most excel- 
lent : — The Nun's Priest's Tale, a droll apologue of the Cock 
and the Fox, in which the very absurdity of some of the accom- 
paniments confers one of the highest qualities which a fable can 
possess, viz. so high a degree of individuality that the reader for- 



52 OUTLINKS OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. II. 

gets lliat the persons of llio little drr are animals, and sympa- 
thizes with them as human heings ; - Merchant's Tale, which, 
like the comic stories generally, thongii very indelicate, is yet re- 
plete with the richest and broadest humour; the Reve's Tale, and 
many shorter stories distributed among the less prominent charac- 
ters. But the crown and pearl of Chaucer's drollery is the Mill- 
er's Tale, in which the delicate and penetrating description of 
the various actors in the adventure can only be surpassed by the 
perfectly natural yet outrageously ludicrous catastrophe of the in- 
trigue in which they move. 

There is certainly nothing, in the vast treasury of ancient or 
modern humorous writing, at once so real, so droll, and so exqui- 
sitely enjoue in the manner of telling. It is true that the subject 
is not of the most delicate nature ; but, though coarse and plain- 
speaking, Chaucer is never corrupt or vicious: his improprieties 
are rather the fruit of the ruder age in which he lived, and the 
turbid ebullitions of a rich and active imagination, than the cool, 
analysing, studied profligacy — the more dangerous and corrupting 
because veiled under a false and morbid sentimentalism — which 
defiles a great portion of the modern literature of too many civil- 
ised countries. 

It is worthy of remark that all the tales are in verse with the 
exception of two, one of which, singularly enough, is given to 
Chaucer himself. This requires some explanation. When the 
poet is first called upon for his story, he burots out into a long, 
confused, fantastical tale of chivalry, relating the adventures of a 
certain errant-knight. Sir Thopas, and his wanderings in search 
of the Queen of Faerie. This is written in the peculiar versi- 
fication of the Tronveres (note, that it is the only tale in which 
lie has adopted this measure), and is full of all the absurdities of 
those compositions. When in the full swing of declamation, and 
when we are expecting to be overwhelmed with page after page 
of this " sleazy stutT," — for the poet goes on gallantly, like Don 
Quixote, " in the style his books of chivalry had taught him, imi- 
tating, as near as he can, their very phrase," — he is suddenly in- 
terrupted by honest Harry Bailey, the Host, who plays the part 
of Moderator or Chorus to Chaucer's pleasant comedy. The 
Host begs hinj, with many strong expressions of ridicule and dis- 
gust, to give them no more of such " drafty rhyming," and en- 
treats him to let them hear something less worn-out and tir ~ome. 
The poet then proposes to entertain the party with " a litei -hinge 
in prose," and relates the allegorical story of Meliboens and his 
wife Patience. It is evident that Chaucer, well aware of the im- 
measurable superiority of the newly revived classical literature 
over the barbarous and now exhausted invention of the Romanz 
poets, has chosen this ingenious method of ridiculing the com- 



CHAP. II. 3 CHAUCER : CANTERBURY TALES, 53 

monplace tales of chivalry ; but so exquisitely grave is the irony 
in this passage, that many critics have taken the ' Rime of Sir 
Thopas ' for a serious composition, and have regretted that it was 
left a fragment ! 

The other prose tale (we have mentioned Melibceus) is sup- 
posed to be related by the Parson, who is always described as a 
model of Christian humility, piety, and wisdom ; which does not, 
however, save him from the terrible suspicion of being a Lollard, 
i. e., a heretical and seditious revolutionist. 

This composition hardly can be called a "tale," for it contains 
neither persons nor events ; but it is very curious as a specimen 
of the sermons of the early Reformers ; for a sermon it is, and 
nothing else — a sermon on the Seven Deadly Sins, divided and 
subdivided with all the pedantic regularity of the day. It also 
gives us a very curious insight into the domestic life, the manners, 
the costume, and even the cookery, of the fourteenth century. 
Some critics have contended that this sermon was added to the 
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer at the instigation of his confessors, 
as a species of penitence for the light and immoral tone of much 
of his writings, and particularly as a sort of recantation, or amende 
honorable, for his innumerable attacks on the monks. But this 
supposition is in direct conlradiction with every line of his ad- 
mirable portrait of the Parson ; and, however natural it may have 
been for the licentious Boccaccio to have done such public pe- 
nance for his ridicule of the " Frati," and his numberless sensual 
and immoral scenes, his English follower was " made of sterner 
stuff." The friend of John of Gaunt, and the disciple of Wick- 
liffe, was not so easily to be worked upon by monastic subtlety 
as the more superstitious and sensuous Italian. 

The language of Chaucer is a strong exemplification of the re- 
marks we made in our first chapter respecting the structure of the 
English lanffuage. The ground of his diction will be ever found 
to be the pure vigorous Anglo-Saxon English of the people, in- 
laid, if we may so style it, with an immense quantity of Norman- 
French words. We may compare this diction to some of those 
exquisite specimens of incrusting left us by the obscure but great 
artists of the Middle Ages, in which the polish of metal or ivory 
contrasts so richly with the lustrous ebony. 

The difBculty of reading this great poet is very much ex- 
aggerated : a very moderate acquaintance with the French and 
Italian of the fourteenth century, and the observation of a few 
simple rules of pronunciation, will enable any educated person to 
read and to enjoy. In particular it is to be remarked that the final 
letter e, occurring in so many English words, had not yet become an 
emute i and must constantly be pronounced, as well as the termi- 
nation of the past tense, ed, in a separate syllable. The accent 

5* 



54 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [ciIAP. III. 

also is more varied in its position than is now common in the 
language. Read with these precautions, Chaucer will be found as 
harmonious as he is tender, magnificent, humorous, or sublime. 

Unlil the reader is able and willing to appreciate the innumer- 
able beauties of the Canterbury Tales, it is not to be expected 
that he can make acquaintance with the graceful though some- 
wliat pedanlic ' Court of Love,' an illegorical poem, bearing the 
strongest marks of its Provencal o. :rii) ; or with the exquisile 
delicacy and pure chivalry of the ' I'lower and the Leaf;' of 
which latter poem Campbell speaks as follows, enthusiastically 
but justly: — "The Flower and the Leaf is an exquisite piece of 
fairy fancy. With a moral that is just sufficient to apologize for 
a dream, and yet which sits so li, ly on the story as not to 
abridge its most visionary parts, th j; is, in the whole scenery 
and objects of the poem, an air of wonder and sweetness, an 
easy and surprising transition, that is truly magical." 

We cannot conclude this brief and imperfect notice of this 
great poet without strongly recoinniending all those who desire 
to know something of the true character of English literature to 
lose no time in making acquaintance with the admirable produc- 
tions of "our father Chaucer," as Gascoigne affectionately calls 
him: the diflicnlties of his style have been unreasonably exag- 
gerated, and tlie labour which surmounts them will be abundantly 
repaid. " It will conduct you," to use the beautiful words of 
Milton, "to a hill-side; laborious indeed at the first ascent, but 
else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospects and melodi- 
ous souiuls on every side, that the harp of Orpheus was not more 
charmino;." 



CHAPTER IIL 



SIDNEY AND SPENSER. 



Elizabethan Era — Ages of Pericles, Augustus, the Medici, Louis XIV. — Chivalry 
— Sidney — The Arcadia — His Style — Spenser — Shepherd's Calendar — Pasto- 
ral — Spenser at Court — 13urleigh and Leicester — Settlement in Ireland — The 
Faery Queen — Spenser's Death — Criticism of the Faery Queen — Style, Lan- 
guage, and Versification. 

In the history of most countries the period of the highest literary 
glory will generally be found to coincide with that of some very 
marked and permanent achievements in commerce or in war. 
Nor is this circumstance surprising. Those men who best can 



CHAP. 111.^ ELIZABETHAN ERA. 55 

perform great actions are in general best able to think sublime 
thoughts. It was not a fortuitous assemblage, in the same coun- 
try and at the same period, of such minds as those of Eschylus, 
Sophocles, and Euripides, that V-'.s made us assume the age of 
Pericles as the culminating point of Athenian literature. No ! 
the defeat of the Persians cannot but be considered as having a 
great deal to do with the existence of that splendid period. 

In the same way, the far-famed age of Louis XIV. was un- 
doubtedly prepared, if not produced, by the long religious wars of 
the Reformation, the national enthusiasm being also raised by the 
brilliant exploits of French arms in Germany and Flanders. 

That period in the history of English letters which corresponds 
1o the epochs to which we have alluded, is the age of Elizabeth. 
It is the Elizabethan era which represents, among us, the age of 
Pericles, that of Augustus, that of the Medici, that of Leo, that of 
Louis ; nay, it may be asserted, and without any exaggerated 
national vanity, that the productions of this one era of English 
literature may boldly be opposed to the intellectual triumphs of 
all the other epochs mentioned, tp.ken collectively. 

In this case, as in the others, a gigantic revolution had taken 
place, recent indeed, but not so recent as to leave men's minds 
under the more immediate acli; i of party spirit and political 
enmity. The intellect of England had lately been engaged in a 
struggle for its liberty and its religion; it had had time to repose, 
but not to be enfeebled: it now started on its race of immortality, 
glowing, indeed, from the arena, but not weakened ; its muscles 
strung with wrestling, but not exhausted. During the actual ar- 
dour of any great political struggle, men's minds are naturally too 
intent upon the more immediate and personal question, and their 
views too much narrowed and distorted by prejudice and polemics, 
for any great achievements in general literature to be expected ; 
but it is in the period of {ranqm\\'\\y iminediafely succeeding; such 
great national revolutions that the human intellect soars aloft with 
steadiest, broadest, and sublimest wing into the calmer empj'rean 
of poetry or philosophy — 

" Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot 
Which men call Earth." 

The great revolution to which we have been alluding is, we 
hardly need say, the Reformation ; the doctrines of which were 
first solidly established in England under the sceptre of Eliza- 
beth, and in whose vehement struggles was trained that generation 
which was to be adorned by Sidney, by Spenser, and by Raleigh. 

The other condition, too, which we have specified as necessary 
to the production of a great and immortal era in literature, viz. a 
high degree of military glory, was certainly to be found in this 



56 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. III. 

reign : we need only mention the annihilation of the Spanish 
Armada. 

In England, at all periods of our history, literature, speaking 
generally, has almost alwaj's emanated from the people, and 
consequently has always talked the language of the people, and 
addressed itself to the people's s)'mpathies ; and this is the reason 
of the greater vital force which it must be allowed to possess. 
Homer and Shakspeare will ever be read with increasing ardour 
and veneration, and this because their works reflect, not so much 
a period or a nation, as the universal heart of man — the same in 
every climate and in every age. 

Besides this fortunate circumstance there were also certain in- 
fluences at work, peculiar to that brilliant period, and calculated 
to produce and foster the rapid development which then took 
place. We have seen the tone of the Italian poetry first infused, 
so to speak, into English literature by Chaucer and Gower, and 
the immense influx of classic ideas and classic language which 
flowed in at that time. At first, however, the crasis (to use a 
term of the old medicine) between the dissimilar and discordant 
elements — the ancient Saxonism, the modern classicism, and the 
romantic spirit of the chivalrous literature — was not, as might 
have been expected, perfect or complete; and it was not till the 
time of Elizabeth that the amalgamation of tliese elements was 
sufl'iciently brought about to produce a harmonious and healthy 
result. The spirit of the Reformation, also — an inquiring, active, 
practical and fervent spirit — was necessary to complete the union 
of these discordant ingredients. 

Chivalry, indeed, as a political or social system, had ceased to 
exist at the period of Elizabeth : that is to say, chivalry no longer 
exerted any very perceptible influence on the relations of men 
with the stale or with each other. But though it no longer existed 
as an active and energetic influence, modifying either social life 
or political relations; though it no longer gave any tone to the 
general physiognomy of the times, its moral influence still existed 
with powerful though diminished force: it still perceptibly modi- 
fied the manners of the court and of the higher classes: the idol 
was indeed cast down from tlie altar, but a solemn and holy atmo- 
sphere of sanctity still breathed around the walls of the temple; 
the pure, the ennobling, the heroic portion of the knightly spirit 
yet glowed with no decaying fervour in the hearts of such men 
as Essex, Raleigh, Sidney; and found a worthy voice in the 
sweet dignity of Spenser's song. 

Though the joust and tournament had degenerated from their 
ancient splendour (and this because they were no longer so neces- 
sary as of old), and had become the idle pageant of a magnificent 
court, many of the gallant tilters of Whitehall had not forgotten 



CHAP. III.] SIDNEY : THE ARCADIA. 57 

tlie principles of the cliivalric character — " high thoughts, seated," 
to use the beautiful language of Sidney, "in a heart of courtesy," 

Of this majestic period the brightest figure is that of Sir Philip 
Sidney, the most complete embodiment of all the graces and vir- 
tues which can adorn or ennoble humanity. He was at once the 
Bayard and the Petrarch of English history, a name to which 
every Briton looks back with pride, admiration, and regret. Noble 
of birth, beautiful in person, splen !id and generous, of a bravery 
almost incredible, wise in council, learned himself, and a powerful 
and generous protector of learnin: — in him seem to be united all 
the solidest gifts and the most attractive ornaments of body and 
of mind. The throne of Poland, to which he was elected, could 
hardly have conferred additional splendour upon so consummate a 
character; and we almost approve of the jealous admiration of 
Elizabeth, who prevented him from mounting that throne, that she 
might not lose the"jewelof her court." Very brief, indeed, was the 
career of this glorious star of the Elizabethan firmament, but the 
brightness of its setting was well worthy of its rising and meri- 
dian ray ; and the field of Zulphen was sanctified by those words 
which can hardly be paralleled in the history of ancient or modem 
heroism: "this man's necessity is greater than mine." But the 
hand which faintly motioned the cup to the lips of the dying sol- 
dier was the same which wrote the knightly pages of the 'Arca- 
dia,' and touched the softest note of " that small lute" which 
"gave ease to Petrarch's pain," and drew from the sonnet a tender 
melody not unworthy of the poet of Arqua. 

There are few productions of similar importance whose cha- 
racter and merits have been so much misrepresented by modern 
ignorance and superficial criticism as Sidney's great work, the 
romance of the 'Arcadia.' 

Disraeli has collected, in his 'Amenities of Literature,' a large 
number of depreciating criticisms made by various authors on the 
' Arcadia' of Sidney. Walpole pronounced it " a tedious, lament- 
able, pedantic, pastoral romance ;" Gifford affirms " that the plan 
is poor, thf incidents trite, the style pedantic;" Dunlop complains 
that it is " extremely tiresome ;" yet this book was the favourite 
and model in the age of Shakspeare ! Shakspeare has in a thou- 
sand exquisite places imitated the scenes, the manners, and even 
the diction of the 'Arcadia;' Shirley, Beaumont, and Fletcher 
turned to it as their text-book ; Sidney enchanted two later brothers 
in Waller and Cowley; and the world of fashion in Sidney's age 
culled their phrases out of the 'Arcadia,' which served them as a 
complete ' Academy of Compliments.' 

Disraeli then goes on to show that modern critics, misled by 
the title of this prose romance, which Sidney injudiciously adopt- 
ed from Sannazzaro, have generally concluded, without taking 



58 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. III. 

the trouble of reading it, to consider it as a pastoral, similar to 
that multitudinous class of fictions so popular in the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries, and of which the 'Galatea' of Cervantes is 
a well-known specimen. The fact is, however, that the Arca- 
dian or pastoral parts of Sidney's work are merely supplementary, 
forming no essential portion of the narrative ; being, in short, 
merely interludes of shepherds introduced dancing arid reciting 
verses at the close of each book. There can be no doubt but that 
the scenes and sentiments described with such a sweet luxuriance 
of beautiful language were reflections of true events in Sidney's 
own chivalrous life, and transcripts from his own gentle and heroic 
heart. We cannot better conclude our notice on this work than 
by a selection from the remarks of Disraeli : — " He describes ob- 
jects on which he loves to dwell, with a peculiar richness of fancy : 
he had shivered his lance in the tilt, and had managed the fiery 
courser in his career; and in the vivid picture of the shock be- 
tween two knights we see distinctly every motion of the horse 
and horseman. But sweet is his loitering hour in the sunshine of 
luxuriant gardens, or as we lose ourselves in the green solitudes 
of the forests which most he loves. There is a feminine delicacy 
in whatever alludes to the female character, not merely courtly, 
but imbued with that sensibility which St. Palayehas remarkably 
described as 'full of refinement and fanaticism.' And this may 
suggest an idea, not improbable, that Shakspeare drew his fine 
conceptions of female character from Sidney. Shakspeare solely, 
of all our elder dramatists, has given true beauty to woman ; and 
Shakspeare was an attentive reader of the 'Arcadia.'" 

Besides this romance, which, though in prose, partakes more 
markedly of the character of poetry, Sidney was the author, as 
we have hinted above, of a considerable number of Sonnets, some 
of very singular beauty, and of a short treatise entitled ' The De- 
fense of Poesie,' the nature of which is perfectly expressed in the 
title. The beauty of our author's prose style is no less conspicu- 
ous in this work than the deep feeling which he exhibits for the 
value and the charms of poetry. The language, indeed, is itself 
poetry of no mean order, and in this work, no less than in the 
'Arcadia,' do we find in every line reason to confirm the judgment 
of Cowper, who was keenly alive to Sir Philip's merits, and who 
thus qualifies his style : — 

" Sidney, warbler of poetic prose. ^^ 

He was mortally wounded by a musket-ball in the left thigh at 
the skirmish at Zutphen, September 22, 1586, and died on the 
15th of October following, in his thirty-second year, and was 
buried in St. Paul's. To do, in so short a life, so much for im- 
mortality, is the lot of few ; of still fewer to excite, in dying, 



CHAP. III.] SIDNEY— SPENSER. 59 

such universal sorrow as that which followed Sidney to the grave ; 
for in him the court lost its chiefest ornament, learning its steadi- 
est patron, genius its boldest defender and firmest friend, and his 
country her most illustrious child — 

" The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword : 
The expectancy and rose of the fair state. 
The glass of fashion, and the mould of forna, 
The observed of all observers." 

The greatest English poet after Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, was 
born in London about the year 1553, that is, a year before Sid- 
ney, and educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. On leaving 
the University he retired (it is supposed in the quality of a private 
tutor) to the North of England, in which retirement he composed 
the first production which attracted notice to his youthful genius. 
This was ' The Shepherd's Calendar,' a long poem divided into 
twelve parts or months, consisting of pastoral dialogues of a plaint- 
ive and amatory character. The Italian taste then prevalent in 
Europe, and which filled the literature of every country with imi- 
tations, more or less frigid, of the Arcadianisms of Guarini and 
Sannazzaro, is perhaps more perceptible in Spenser than any 
author, even of the " Italianated" Elizabethan age; and it is sin- 
gular to observe how universally this manner M'as adopted in the 
early essays of the young poets of the day. " Babes," says the 
Scripture, "are fed with milk;" and it seems natural that the 
romantic genius of youth should nourish itself on the pure but 
somewhat insipid delicacies of the poetical "Golden Age." 
Eager to give to the form of his work the originality which was 
necessarily wanting to its design, Spenser rejected the rather 
worn-out Corydons and Tityruses of the classical idyllists, and 
gave to his shepherds and his scenery as much of an English air 
as he could by adopting English names and describing English 
nature : the same result also was aimed at in the language, into 
which he strove to infuse the spirit of the antique, and at the same 
time of a rustic simplicity, by adopting a great deal of the now 
almost obsolete diction of Chaucer. His shepherds, however, are 
not much inferior in point of nature and probability to the general 
run of pastoral personages — to the disguised courtiers who pipe 
and sing in Virgil's Mantuan shades, or the masquerading pedants 
of the modern Italian school ; in short, to none of these sham 
shepherds, always excepting the admirable rustics of Theocritus. 
The subjects of the various poems of the ' Shepherd's Calendar' 
are the same which form the ciirta siipellex of ordinary pastorals: 
the hinds of Spenser are suflicienlly " melancholy and gentleman- 
like," and pour out their melodious complaints without exciting 
any very deep sympathy in the reader. They remind us of 
young, thoughtful scholars, who have, "for very wantonness," 



60 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. III. 

put on tlie garb of rustics, and whose elegant and graceful thoughts 
are breathed in the language not of tlie field but of the study. 

This work, besides exercising the youthful poet's powers of 
diction and harmony, acquired for him the admiration and friend- 
ship of the learned Gabriel Harvey, who, though fantastical in 
his literary tastes, and though for a time infecting Spenser with 
his own enthusiasm for his metrical whimsies, was of the greatest 
use to his modest and sensitive friend. The projects to which 
we have alluded were, among others, nothing less than the em- 
ployment of the classical or syllabic mode of versification in En- 
glish poetry. He has left us some most inimitable specimens of' 
dactylic and iambic measures^ which furnish a ludicro 's proof of 
the inherent absurdity of the project. Spenser, too, has perpe- 
trated some monstrous "classicisms" of this nature; and these 
show that not even the exquisite ear of the most harmonious of 
our poets could render bearable the application of the prosody of 
quantity to a language essentially accentual in its metrical cha- 
racter. 

This curious literary folly, however, was at this period exceed- 
ingly epidemic; for similar attempts were made, and with exactly 
as much success, to naturalize the Greek and Roman metres ia 
the Italian, Spanish, and even the French languages. In German, 
however, the innovation has lasted (and with tolerable success) 
down to the present day. / 

It was to Harvey that Spenser is supposed 'o have owed his 
introduction to Sir Philip Sidney, at whose ancestral seat of Pens- 
hurst the poet passed perhaps the brightest years of his unhappy 
lil'e. We have stood beneath "Spenser's Oak" in the beautiful 
park of that venerable place, and dreamed of the hero and the 
poet — both still so young, yet with the halo of immortality already 
on their front, seated, "in colloquy sublime," beneath those mur- 
muring boughs. It was here thai Spenser completed his * Shep- 
herd's Calendar,' dedicating it, under the title of ' The Poet's 
Year,' to his young patron, ' Maister Pliilip Sidney, worthy of 
all titles, both of learning: and chivalry." Through the medium 
of Sidney the poet obtained the protection of the great Earl of 
Leicester, the favourite of Elizabeth, and uncle of "Maister 
Philip ;" and through Leicester Spenser acquired the notice of 
his royal mistress. 

Our youthful poet now became a courtier, and forms one star 
— and one of the brightest too — of that irlorious galaxy which 
gave such splendour to the court of the " Maiden Queen." 

But in leaving the green solitudes of Penshurst for the splen- 
dours of the court, Spenser was destined to exchange his freedom 
and his happiness for a chain only the heavier because it was of 
gold. He forgot the profound truth concealed in that oracular 



CHAP. III.] SPENSER IN IRELAND. Gl 

verse of the poet which so truly describes the proper atmosphere 
for a lettered life, — 

" Flumina amem sylvasque, inglorius;" — 

and he paid for his mistake the heavy penalty of a life embittered 
by court disappointments, and finished in affliction. 

Though early distinguished by the favour of Elizabeth, his life 
at court seems to have been a nearly uninterrupted succession of 
mortifications and disappointments. The very favour of the Earl 
of Leicester, powerful as it was, was not omnipotent, and in 
courts, as in the fairy tale, the talisman or charmed weapon, given 
to the adventurous knight by a friendly magician, often proves the 
very cause of his being attacked by a hostile enchanter. The 
very patronage and protection of Leicester naturally drew upon 
Spenser the dislike and suspicion of Lord Burleigh, then Chan- 
cellor and highly favoured by Elizabeth: and the poet, in innu- 
merable passages of his works, has alluded to the discouragement 
and coldness he experienced at the hands of the great lawyer. 
One stanza, indeed, describing the miseries of court dependence, 
has passed ineffaceably into the memory of every reader of Eng- 
lish poetry. It is so painfully beautiful and so evidently sincere 
— written, as it were, with the very heart's blood of the poet — 
that we cannot forbear quoting it here : — 

" Full little knowest thou who hast not tried, 
What hell it is in suing long to bide; 
To lose good days that might be better spent; 
To waste long nights in pensive discontent; 
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow; 
To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow ; 
To have thy prince's grace, yet want her peers'' ; 
To have thy asking, yet wait many years ; 
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares; 
To eat thy heart in comfortless despairs ; 
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run, 
To spend, to give, to wait — to be undone." 

At length, however, Spenser received (in 1580) the appoint- 
ment of secretary to Lord Grey de Wilton, whom he accompanied 
to Ireland, and under whose orders the poet seems to have dis- 
tinguished himself as a man of business, for he was soon after- 
wards rewarded with a grant from the Crown of 3000 acres of 
land in the county of Cork, an estate which had previously formed 
part of the domains belonging to the Earls of Desmond, but which 
had been forfeited to the Crown. This is one of the numerous 
instances of Elizabeth's ingenious policy; for she thus rewarded 
a faithful servant with a gift of land which cost her nothing, and 
which the recipient (or " undertaker," as he was termed) was 
bound by his contract to inhabit and keep in cultivation. A terri- 
tory, however, recently devastated by contending armies with fire 
6 



62 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. III. 

and sword, was a gift rather splendid in appearance than profit- 
able in reality; and perliaps the principal advantage derived by 
Spenser from this donation was the necessity it imposed upon 
liini of residing on his estate, and the leisure which it enabled 
him to dedicate to his literary pursuits. He took up his abode in 
the ancient castle of Kilcolman, situated in the midst of his beau- 
tiful but unproductive domain, and it is here that he composed 
the greater part of his immortal work — tbe poem of ' The Faerie 
Queene.' The scenery by which he was here surrounded is re- 
marked for its beauty even in beautiful Ireland; and it may not 
be fanciful to speculate how far the natural loveliness of the spot 
is reflected and reproduced in the ricli pictures which fill the 
pages of the poem. 

It was here that the poet was visited by Raleigh, then a young 
man, beginijing, as Captain of the Guards, that extraordinary and 
brilliant career which has rendered his name so illustrious at once 
for learning and for enterprise. To Raleigh — a kindred spirit — 
Spenser communicated his literary projects, and read to him the 
unfinished cantos of the ' Faerie Queene.' Among the various 
friendships and meetings recorded among great men, there is per- 
haps none on which we reflect with such interest as this : how 
delightful is it to picture to ourselves the Arioslo of England and 
the colonizer of Virginia seated together on the banks of JMulla, 
exchanging thoughts bright with immortality, 

" amongst the cooly shade 
Of tlie green alders, by the Malta's shore !" 

The " Shepherd of the Ocean," as Raleigh was styled in Sjien- 
scr's poetical nomenclature, replaced for the bard, in some degree 
at least, the irreparable loss inflicted by the early death of Sidney — 
perhaps the severest blow inflicted on the sensitive heart of the 
])oet during the earlier part of his career : the death of his youlh- 
ivA patron cast a gloom over the whole of his too short existence. 

In 1590 Spenser returned to England, in order to present to 
Elizabeth the first part of the 'Faerie Queene ;' and, insatiable as 
was that great sovereign in the matter of praise and adulation, 
Mith the exquisite tribute of Spenser's JMuse she must have 
been profoundly gratified. All the learning and genius of an age 
remarkable for learning and genius were exhausted in supplying 
the Maiden Monarch with incessant clouds of elegant and poeti- 
cal incense; and among all the worshippers in the temple none 
were certainly more devoted or more capable than Spenser. The 
annals of court adulation are in general among the most humili- 
ating pages of human folly and absurdity; but the age of Eliza- 
beth was singular and fortunate in one respect: the greatness of 
the sovereifrn's character was not un worth v of the sublimest 



CHAP. III.] SPENSER: HIS RETURN TO LONDON. 63 

Strains of panegyric, and the greatest among poets — for Sliak- 
speare and Spenser both praised, in deathless verse, this extraor- 
dinary ruler — found in the achievements and the wisdom of their 
patroness a subject which they could adorn, but hardly exaggerate. 
The queen expressed her appi-obation of the poem by conferring 
on the author a pension of 50/. per annum — in estimating which 
reward we must consider the much higher value of money at 
that period : and Spenser then probably returned to Ireland ; for 
in 1595 he published his pastoral of 'Colin Clout,' and in 159G 
the second part of the ' Faerie Queene.' It must not however be 
supposed that the poet had no occupation during this period ex- 
cepting such as he found in the " strenua inertia" — the laborious 
abstraction of a literary life ; he was employed actively and un- 
interruptedly in the service of the state ; for, after passing through 
many subordinate employments, we find him, about this time. 
Clerk of the Council for the province of Munster, and exhibit- 
ing the knowledge he had acquired of the character and pros- 
pects of the conquered nation in his interesting prose work enti- 
tled ' A View of the State of Ireland.' This book, the production 
of one who was at the same time a poet and a statesman, bears 
every mark of its author's double quality: It gives a most curi- 
ous and evidently faithful description of the manners of the Celtic 
inhabitants of the country, and contains many wise hints for the 
subjection and civilizing of that warlike race. It is true that 
some of the measures recommended by Spenser are of a violent 
and coercive character ; but we should be unwise to expect in u 
writer of the sixteenth century a tone of mildness and toleration 
unknown in politics previous to the nineteenth. 

During the whole of Spenser's residence in Ireland, he appears 
to have made frequent voyages to his own country, and seems to 
have been agitated by an incessant and feverish discontentment — 
dissatisfied probably with the very reward conferred upon him 
by the queen — a reward which condemned him to reside in a 
barbarous and disturbed country, and deprived him of the plea- 
sures and society of the court. This honourable banishment un- 
der the disguise of advancement was perhaps an ingenious con- 
trivance of the profound and tortuous policy of Spenser's great 
opponent, Burleigh, who thus removed the dangerous fascinations 
of Spenser's manners and genius far from the sphere of the court, 
and thus deprived the party of Leicester of a hold upon Eliza- 
beth's capricious and impressionable vanity. 

In 1597 Spenser retired for the last time to Ireland, and shortly 
afterwards the flame of popular discontent, communicated from 
the furious outburst which, under the name of" Tyrone's Rebel- 
lion," had been raging for some years in Ulster, swept over his 
retreat at Kilcolman Castle, and drove Spenser, a heartbroken 



C4 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [ciIAP. III. 

ami ruined man, to die in sorrow and distress in London. In his 
ollices of Clerk of the Council, and afterwards of SherilV of Cork, 
Sponsor had probably given but too much grounds for the accu- 
sation of injustice and oppression brought against him by the 
Irish, and exaggerated by the natural indignation of a proud and 
savajie people uneasy under a recent yoke. In October, 1598, 
the Castle of Kilcolman was attacked and burned by the insurg- 
ents, and Spenser, with ditliculty saving Idmsclf and his w'ife from 
the fury of the victors, escaped to Enghuid. In tlie hurry of 
leaving his bhizing residence, however, either from tlie imminence 
of personal danger or from one of those frightful mistakes so 
likely to happen at such terrific moments, the poet's infant child 
Avas left behind, and perished with the house. Spenser reached 
London, ruined, heartbroken, and despairing, and, after lingering 
for three months, he died, in King Street, Westminster, on the 
Ifith of January, 1599. 

He was buried in Westminster Abbey, near the tomb of Chaucer. 

The following is an account of the principal poems of Spenser, 
at least of such as are not alluded to in the foregoing pages : — ' The 
Tears of the Muses,' and ' Mother Hubbard's Tale,' published in 
1591; 'Daphnaida,' 1592; The ' Amoretti' and ' Epithalamium' 
— two works descriptive of his courtship and marriage, the latter 
one of the noblest liymeneal songs in any language — in 1595 ; and 
the ' Elegy on Astrophil,' a lament on the death of the illustrious 
Sidney, at the same period. We have hinted that the 'Fairy 
Queen' was given to the world in detached portions and at long 
intervals of time : the dates of these various publications are 
nearly as follows: — Books I., II.. and III. appeared together in 
January 1589-90; IV., V., and VI. in 1596. 

The design of the whole poem, if completed, would have given 
us one of the most splendid works of romantic liction in which 
Chivalry ever pronounced the oracles of Wisdom : and we may 
judge, by the unlinished portion of this Palace of Honour, what 
would have been the gorgeous ellect of the whole majestic struc- 
ture. Spenser supposed the Fairy Queen to appear in a vision 
to Prince Arthur, w lio, awaking deeply enamoured, resolves on 
seeking his unearthly mistress in Faery Land. The poet then 
represents the Fairy Queen as holding her solemn and annual 
feast during twelve days, on each of which a perilous adventure 
is undertaken by some particular knight; each of die twelve 
knights typifying some moral virtue. "The first," to use the 
words of Chambers's abridoinent of the plan, '" is the Redcross 
Knight, expressing Holiness ; the second. Sir Guyon, or Tem- 
perance; and the third, Britomartis, ' a lady knight,' representing 
Chastity. There was thus a blending of chivalry and religion in 
the design of the ' Faery Queen.' Besides his personification of 



CHAP. in. J SPENSER : THE FAERIE QrZENE. 65 

the al)str2ct virtues, the poet made his allegorical personages snd 
their adventures represent historical characters and events. The 
queen, Gloriana, and the huntress, Belphoebe, are both symboli- 
cal of Queen Elizabeth ; the adventures of the Redcross Knight 
shadow forth the history of the (Jhurch of England ; and the dis- 
tressed knight is Henry IV. The Fourth, Fiftii, and Sixth Books 
contain the legend of Cambel and Triaraond, or Friendship ; Ar- 
tegal, or Justice ; and Sir Calidore, or Courtesy. A double alle- 
gory is contained in these cantos, as in the previous ones : Artejal 
is the poet's friend and patron. Lord Grey ; and various historical 
events are related in the knight's adventures. Half of the orisrinal 
design was thus finished ; six of the twelve adventures and moral 
virtues were produced : but unfortunately the world saw only 
some fragments more of the work." 

Even were we not fully aware of the great general influence 
exerted on the age of Elizabeth by the taste for Italian poetr\-, 
we should be easily enabled to trace its effect in modifying the 
genius of Spenser. The ' Faery Queen' is written in a peculiar 
versification to which we have given the name of the " Spen- 
serian stanza." It is really nothing more than the Italian " ottava 
rima," or eight-lined stanza, to which Spenser, in order to she to 
the English the "linked sweetness lono; drawn out" of the " fa- 
vella Toscana," most wisely added a ninth line, whose billowy 
flow admirably winds up the swelling and varying music jof each 
stanza. This measure is as difficult to write with effect in Eng- 
lish as it is easy in Italian, a language in which the rhymes are 
so abundant, and the rhythmic cadence so inherent, that it requires 
almost an effort to avoid giving a metrical form even to prose : 
and Spenser has wielded this complicated instrument with such 
consummate mastery and grace, that the rich abundant melody of 
his versification almost oppresses the ear with its overwhelming 
sweetness. Like the soft undulation of a Tropic sea, it bears us 
onward dreamily with easy swell and falls, by wizard islands of 
sunshine and of rest, by bright phantom-peopled realms and old 
enchanted cities. 

The genius of Spenser is essentially pictorial. There are no 
scenes, soft or terrible, which ever glowed before the intellectual 
gaze of the great painters which have more reality than his; like 
the gallery so exquisitely described by Byron : — 

" There rose a Carlo Dolce, or a Titian, 

Or wilder group ot'sarage SaUatores; 
There danced Albano's boys, and here the sea shone 

With Vernefs ocean lights; and there the stories 
Of martyrs awed, as Spagnoietto tainted 
His bnuh with ail the blood of aJi the sainted. 



66 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. III. 

There sweetly spread a landscape of Lorraine ; 

There Rembrandt made his darkness equal liglit; 
Or gloomy Caravaggio's gloomier stain 

Bronzed o'er some lean and stoic anchorite." 

*' His commantl of imagery," says Campbell, the truth and 
beauty of whose criticisms will form our best apology for adopt- 
ing them instead of our own, "is wide, easy, and luxuriant. He 
threw the soul of harmony into our verse, and made it more 
warmly, tenderly, and magnificently descriptive than it ever was 
before, or, with a few exceptions, than it has ever been since. It 
must certainly be owned that in description he exhibits nothing 
of the brief strokes and robust power which characterize the very 
greatest poets ; but we shall nowhere find more airy and expan- 
sive images of visionary things, a sweeter tone of sentiment, or a 
finer flush in the colours of language, than in this Rubens of 
English poetry." 

But perhaps the best and most comprehensive criticism upon 
Spenser's merit is that recorded by Pope in one of his letters to 
Spence : — " After my reading a canto of Spenser two or tliree 
days ago to an old lady between seventy and eighty, she said that 
I had been showing her a collection of pictures. She said very 
right." 

The chief defect of this admirable poet is one almost insepara- 
ble from allegory in general, and particularly allegory so compli- 
cated as that of Spenser, where the feigned resemblance often 
represents several distinct and different types or objects. It can- 
not be denied that there is a great want of human interest in the 
'Faery Queen,' and that the events of his drama have frequently 
no perceptible connection with each other or bearing upon the 
supposed catastrophe. Moreover, there is no bond of interest 
uniting the several cantos of the poem, for they are separate and 
detached adventures, performed by different and unconnected 
characters, and very feebly linked together by their being supposed 
to be undertaken at the command of Gloriana. Arthur is, it is 
irue, the nominal hero, but he is soon forgotten by the reader ; 
and his reappearance at the end of the poem would hardly suffice 
to incorporate into one living body tlie "disjecta membra poetse" 
scattered through the various exploits of the twelve knights. In 
fact, criticism can only enlarge here the definition of Pope's old 
lady, and say that the cantos of Spenser, admirably beautiful as 
they are, glowing with the most varied colours of fancy and 
imagination, want, like the pictures in a gallery, a mutual de- 
pendence and connection. 

Exquisitely diversified, too, as is tlie melody of Spenser's 
verse and manner of treatment, we cannot disguise from ourselves 
a feeling that it is injured by some tinge of that lusciousness and 



CHAP. III.] SPENSER : THE FAERIE QUEENE. 67 

dilatation perceptible in the style of Tasso and Ariosto, whose 
writings it so much resembles. This over-sweetness and luxuri- 
ance seems inseparable from the genius of the Italian language, 
but harmonizes less naturally with the less sensuous character of 
our Northern poesy. 

In the innumerable allegories which people the enchanted 
scenery of Spenser, we are sometimes shocked with those incon- 
gruous details which make us laugh in the engravings of the em- 
blematic Otto Venius, where either the attribute distinguishing the 
moral quality to be personified is so dark and far-fetched as to be 
absolutely unintelligible without explanation, or where it is of a 
nature unfit for the purposes of art. Those who are acquainted 
with the works of Rubens (the pupil of Venius), to whom Spen- 
ser has been so well compared by Campbell, will be at no loss to 
understand our meaning. 

Like many great poets of ancient and modern times, Spenser 
sought to give vigour and solemnity to his language by a plentiful 
adoption of archaisms, words, and expressions consecrated by 
their having been employed by older authors. Virgil gave an air 
of antiquity and simplicity to the Eneid by using multitudes of 
venerable words employed by Ennius. Spenser imitated Chau- 
cer; just as La Fontaine gave naivete and edge to his sly satire 
by an infusion of the admirable expressions of Villon and Rabe- 
lais ; and we hardly agree with those critics who have complained 
of our poet's freedom in this respect. If the rough but time- 
honoured stones taken from the Cyclopean walls of old Ennius be 
allowed to give dignity to the graceful Ionic edifice of Virgil, we 
do not see why the simple diction of Chaucer should not harmo- 
nize well with the rich elegance of the 'Faery Queen' — the rather 
that the latter work is, after all, a Tale of Chivalry — a Romance. 



68 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. IV, 



CHAPTER IV. 

BACON. 

His Birth and Education — 'View of the State of Europe' — His Career — Im- 
peached for Corruption — Death — His Character — State of Philosophy in the 
Sixteenth Century — Its Corruptions and Defects — Bacon's System — Not a Dis- 
coverer — Tlie New Philosophy — Analysis of the Instauratio : I. De Augmen- 
tis ; II. Novum Organum ; III. Sylva Sylvarum ; IV. Scala [ntellectfls ; V. 
Prodromi ; VI. Philosophia Secunda — The Baconian Logic — Style — His Minor 
Works. 

Francis Bacon, the Luther of Philosophy, vvas born in Lon- 
don on the 22d of January, 1561. He was the son of Sir Nicho- 
las Bacon, a distinguished lawyer and Lord Keeper of the Privy 
Seal in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The subject of our pre- 
sent remarks was sent, while yet a boy of thirteen, to the Univer- 
sity of Cambridge; and though it appears to have been customary 
at this period to begin the public part of education much earlier 
than is now usual, we can hardly be wrong in deeming that Bacon 
must have given proofs of a most precocious intellect, when we 
learn that when hardly sixteen he had formed distinct notions re- 
specting the defects of the Aristotelian system of philosophy, and 
had no doubt already conceived the outline of that gigantic plan 
of destruction and innovation which has made his name immortal. 
After remaining four years at Cambridge he went abroad, and tra- 
velled in France, probably intending to pass several years in ac- 
quiring practical experience in the various courts of the continent; 
but the death of his father, in 1579, suddenly recalled him to 
England; not however before he had given proof of the success 
with which he had employed his time in foreign countries, by the 
production of a most sagacious and valuable essay ' On the State 
of Europe.' The political knowledge exhibited in this litUe treat- 
ise, and the profound wisdom and acuteness displayed in it, would 
astonish us, as the work of one hardly entered upon the period of 
adolescence, if any manifestation of intellect could surprise us on 
the part of this astonishing person. It is obvious that he had 
already felt the mysterious vocation of genius — that secret oracle 
which points out to the highest order of minds the true path which 
Providence intended tliem to pursue, a path from which they never 
deviate with impunity. Bacon so strongly felt that the true bent 
of his character would lead him to consecrate his future life to 



CHAP. IV.] bacon's political CAREER. 69 

sublime and solitary meditation, and was so proudly and jiisllj' 
conlident in the yet unexercised strength of his intellect, that he 
entreated Burleigh, the powerful favourite and Chancellor, to pro- 
cure him from the state some provision which would enable him 
to prosecute his studies in uninterrupted leisure. 

Burleigh, however, refused to accede to a proposition which 
must have appeared then, as it would now, so extraordinary and 
unusual; and the young philosopher was obliged to devote him- 
self to the study of the law, which he pursued with industry and 
success. Bacon's after career affords a melancholy example of 
the danger of neglecting that inward voice which calls, as we have 
said a few lines back, the sublimer intellects among mankind to 
the true sphere of their exertions, whispering to the mental, as 
the Daemon of Socrates to the moral, ear the true direction of the 
course. 

While studying the law in Gray's Inn, Bacon sketched out the 
first plan of the ' Instauration,' and probably had decided upon 
the general purport and arrangement of the great works which 
contain his conclusions. The rest of his personal career may be 
described in a few words : the task is a melancholy and humiliat- 
ing one. He rapidly passed through the inferior dignities of the 
law and of the state, being appointed queen's counsel in 1.590, 
and in 1593 chosen member of parliament for the county of Mid- 
dlesex. Both in the courts of law and in the House of Commons 
he was distinguished for the vastness of his knowledge and for 
the brilliancy of his eloquence ; but he was also notorious, even 
in that age, for his subserviency to the most iniquitous despotism 
of the court. Having on one occasion (we select a single exam- 
ple from among many) advocated before the Commons, with all 
the power which marked his mind, a measure of a popular tend- 
ency, he was weak enough, on the first intimation of his inde- 
pendence having displeased the sovereign, to renounce, with 
shameless facility, the convictions which he had just before been 
asserting, and even to apologise for having entertained them. But 
this great man was reserved for yet greater degradation. His 
political conduct continued to present a worthy continuation to 
this lamentable commencement. Obeying every fickle current 
of court favour, he first deserted the party of the Cecils {i. e. of 
his first protector and kinsman Burleigh) for that of the unfortunate 
Essex, who, failing in obtaining for his new proselyte the dignity 
of attorney-general, rewarded his apostacy with the gift of an 
estate at Twickenham worth two thousand pounds. 

Bacon's attachment to Essex was as mercenary as had been 
his adherence to Burleigh, and, on the disgrace and impeachment 
of the Earl, the great lawyer showed a base eagerness to aid the 
overthrow of the unhappy and illustrious victim, exhibiting a 



70 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [ciIAP. IV. 

ferocious violence hardly exceeded in the long and black annals 
of mercenary tribunals and subservient advocates. In order to 
gratify the court, Bacon crowned his apostacy by composing a 
' Declaration of the Treasons and Practices of the Earl of Essex.' 
In the foul descent from baseness to baseness which marks the 
whole of Bacon's political career, we cannot find any extenuating 
circumstances, except indeed such as transfer his guilt from de- 
liberate depravity to a servile calculation of interest. It is con- 
soling indeed to reflect that there has been in no part of human 
conduct so great an improvement in point of morality as in the 
change which has taken place in political relations from the six- 
teenth century to the present day. The fatal prevalence of that 
atrocious and infernal policy which is systematised with such a 
hideous minuteness in the pages of Machiavelli, had extended 
itself from the petty Italian states, where it first appeared, to all 
the countries of Europe ; and that dreadful sophism that " we 
may do evil that good may come" had destroyed the natural bar- 
riers between right and wrong in public afiairs. It is but a poor 
excuse to say that Bacon was no worse than many of his con- 
temporaries ; still less to attempt to palliate ingratitude and coward- 
ice by alleging that Bacon deserted his benefactors and attacked 
the fallen without the inducement of passion and animosity: the 
avarice, the ambition, the cool calculation of profit, which was 
the cause of such wretched servility, is certainly not less able to 
excite our contempt, than a similar conduct dictated by sincere 
hatred or a natural depravity would be capable of inspiring us 
with detestation. The truth is that Bacon, though not personally 
avaricious, was cursed with that passion for state, splendour, and 
magnificence which is so frequently found in a highly imaginative 
character ; and being always plunged in difficulties, he took, with 
that unscrupulousness too common at the period when he lived, 
the shortest way to supply his incessant needs. 

In 1603, at the beginning of the reign of James I., Bacon was 
knighted, and appointed successively king's counsel, solicitor- 
general, and attorney-general (the last dignity having been attained 
in 1613), and he fully justified whatever confidence the court 
could have placed in his subserviency and pliability : so far in- 
deed had he forgotten the great principles of the law whose un- 
worthy minister he was, that he assisted in inflicting on a certain 
Paacham, an aged and obscure clergyman, accused of treason, the 
cruelties of the torture, in order to extort a confession by a means 
hi no way countenanced by the English constitution. It was at this 
period that Bacon married the daughter of a wealthy alderman, 
and seems in this, as well as so many other acts of his life, to 
have consulted interest. He still continued to advance in his 
career of ambition, and in 1619 reached the highest dignity to 



CHAP. IV.l bacon's impeachment DEATH. 71 

■which an English subject can aspire, having been named in lliat 
year Lord High Chancellor, with the title of Baron Verulam. 
This rank he afterwards exchanged, by the protection of Villiers — 
the vain and haughty favourite of James — for the still more exalt- 
ed style of Viscount St. Alban's. In this advance he probably 
received from Villiers the hire for some new obsequiousness to 
the favourite's power, for he allowed the minister to interfere in 
the exercise of his high judicial functions — a crime of which he 
was accused before parliament, and of which (together with many 
minor instances of corruption) he proclaimed himself guilty in a 
confession written with his own hand. On being asked by a 
committee sent for the purpose from the House of Lords, whether 
he confessed the authenticity and truth of this humiliating avowal, 
he is reported to have said, with an expression of sorrow and re- 
pentance which under any other circumstances would have been 
deeply touching, " It is my act, my hand, my heart ; I beseech 
your lordships, press not upon a broken reed." Being fully con- 
victed of these grave charges, he was deprived by parliament of 
the office he had so unworthily prostituted, and sent, with the dark 
stain of a just condemnation upon him, to finish his life in re- 
tirement and disgrace. 

He retired to his estates, and, devoting the remainder of his life 
to those grand speculations which have survived his follies and 
his crimes, and let us hope also to repentance for his past errors, 
he died in 1626, deeply in debt, leaving, as he says himself, with 
a noble sense of the services he had rendered to the human race, 
" his name and memory to foreign nations, and to mine own coun- 
try after some time is passed over." 

It is singular enough that the death of this great philosopher 
should have been caused by a cold caught in performing, a phy- 
sical experiment, and that he should have been, not the apostle 
only, but also the martyr of science. It is related that, travelling 
by Highgate, near London, in wintry weather, he was struck with 
the idea that flesh might be preserved by means of snow as well 
as by salting: he bougiit a fowl, and, descending from his coach, 
assisted with his own hands in making an immediate trial of the 
project by stuffing the hen with snow; and in doing this he is 
said to have received a chill, which, aggravated by his being im- 
mediately put into a damp bed at Lord Arundel's house, caused 
his death in a very few days. But even when his end was ap- 
proaching, the great philosopher, with "the ruling passion strong 
in death," could not forl)ear communicating to a friend, in a letter 
which he dictated, being too ill to write himself, that his experi- 
ment " had succeeded excellently." 

A monument was erected over his grave by his faithful friend 
and disciple, Sir Thomas Meaulys, who was buried at his master's 



72 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. IV. 

feet: and this monument, executed after the design of Sir Henry 
Wotton, a man imbued with a taste for Italian art, has a peculiar 
interest as being a portrait of the philosopher, who is represented 
in his usual dress, seated in an attitude of profound meditation ; 
and the work bears tlie appropriate inscription, " Sic sedebat." 

Of Bacon's personal manners and demeanour all that we know 
is calculated to give us a most extraordinary idea of the charms 
of his conversation and the amiability of his character. Ben 
Jonson, himself so remarkable for his own wonderful stores of 
learning and powers of conversation, and who was, too, no very 
indulgent critic, has expressed his admiration of Bacon's eloquence 
and ready wit. It is consoling to find that, while the conduct of 
the politician presents so many points for the severest reproba- 
tion of the moralist, the character of the man was as attractive as 
his intellect was sublime. Bacon was a most profuse and gene- 
rous master to his dependants ; and his flagitious avidity for money 
may perhaps be as justly attributed to an easiness of temper, pre- 
venting him from being able to say "no" to a petitioner, and to 
those habits of inattention to small matters which so often accom- 
pany the literary character, as to the darker vices to which they 
might be ascribed by severer judges. Osborn, a contemporary 
writer, most probably gives the result of personal experience in 
the following description of Bacon's conversational powers : — "In 
all companies he did appear a good proficient, if not a master, in 
those arts entertained for the subject of every one's discourse. 
His most casual talk deserveth to be written. As I have been 
told, his earliest copies required no great labour to render them 
competent for the nicest judgment. 1 have heard him entertain a 
country lord in the proper terms relating to horses and dogs ; and 
at another time out-cant a London chirurgeon. Nor did an easy 
falling into argument appear less an ornament in him. The ears 
of his hearers received moregratilication than trouble; and were 
no less sorry when he came to conclude, than displeased with 
any who did interrupt him." The learned and amusing Howell 
calls him "a man of recondite science, born for the salvation of 
learning, and, I think, the eloquentest that was born in this isle." 
But of his eloquence we shall be able to give a more exact idea 
when we come to speak of the style of his writings. 

In order to form even an approximative notion respecting the 
nature and importance of the immense revolution produced in 
science by tiie writings of Bacon, it is indispensable to have some 
general idea of the state of science when he wrote. Vague, 
general, and superficial eulogiums have done real injury to the 
fame of this great man; for they have propagated very f^alse no- 
tions respecting the nature of the revolution he eflected, and 
respecting the means by which that revolution was brought about. 



CHAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 73 

Among other vulgar errors of this nature, one of the most dan- 
gerous is that which consists in considering Bacon as a discoverer, 
and attributing to him tlie invention of analysis. This is de- 
grading a great man to the level of a quack. "Bacon's philoso- 
phy," as D'AIembert profoundly says, " was too wise to astonish ;" 
and as to the inductive method of discovering truth, that is as old 
as Aristotle, or rather as old as human reason itself. 

The simple account of the great Baconian innovation will be 
substantially as follows. The Aristotelian method had reigned 
in all the schools and universities of Europe from the period of 
the revival of letters in the fourteenth century; nay, it may be 
considered as having existed during the whole period of the dark 
ages ; and thus to have continued in action, with various degrees, 
it is true, of cultivation and extension, uninterruptedly from the 
time of Aristotle himself. The acute and disputatious spirit of 
the ancient Greeks, so ingenious, so inquisitive, so paradoxical, 
was calculated to abuse the opportunity for idle and fruitless 
speculation afforded by the general tone of the Aristotelian logic; 
and this word-catching and quibbling — in short, this habit of 
arguing to abstract conclusions on insufficient premises — was not 
likely to diminish among the schools of Alexandria and Byzan- 
tium. The perverted ingenuity of the Lower Empire was still 
further sharpened by the part which the Orientals now began to 
play in philosophy. The wildest fantasies and irregularities of 
Eastern subtlety were thus added to the Greek passion for paradox 
and sophistry, and it was in this state, debased with these admix- 
tures, that the schools of the middle ages received the philosophy 
of the Stagyrite. Now tlie monastic spirit was characterised by 
all the various peculiarities together. It was as dreamy and fan- 
tastical as the Oriental genius, as subtle and disputative as the 
Greek, and as sophistical in its tone as the Alexandrian specula- 
tions : and to all these sources of corruption was added another, 
more dangerous than an}' we have mentioned, in the circumstance 
of the Aristotelian philosophy being made part of the ecclesiastical 
system — that is to say, the alliance between the theology of Rome 
and the philosophy of the Lycaeum. 

Orthodoxy liaving once taken under her fatal protection a par- 
ticular system of philosophy, the consequences were equally in- 
jurious to the one and the other; for the Church of Rome was 
thus not only compelled to recognise by her adherence, and pro- 
tect by her authority, the most false conclusions of the sophical 
system, but deprived herself (through her assumption of infalli- 
bility) of the power of ever renouncing any conclusion, however 
absurd, which she had once sanctioned. On the other hand, the 
philosophical system, thus unnaturally connected with religious 
orthodoxy, became at once timid and extravagant, appealing not 
7 



74 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. ^CHAP. IV. 

to sense and reason for the support of its deductions, but to tradi- 
tion and authority, and maintaining its supremacy, not by argu- 
ments, but by persecution and violence, by the sword, the dun- 
geon, and the stake. 

There are few episodes in the great drama of past ages more 
•wonderful, and at the same time more melancholy, than the spec- 
tacle afforded by the intense mental activity of the middle ages. 

What laborious and powerful intellects were there, wasting 
their energies on the vainest of empty speculations ! Incessantly 
they argued and concluded — but their arguments proved nothing, 
and their conclusions were but idle phrases : 

" They found no end, in wandering mazes lost." 

We are not, however, to suppose that, at a period of such pro- 
found and universal agitation as that which preceded the Refor- 
mation, the Aristotelian philosophy, though defended by all the 
thunders of orthodoxy, could pass unquestioned, and meet with 
universal adhesion. No ; there were bold spirits who dared to 
question the soundness of its principles, and examine their reason- 
ableness on grounds of common sense. The great dispute be- 
tween the Nominalists and Realists, by accustoming men to hear 
the boldest speculations upon abstract subjects, prepared the way 
for the ultimate overthrow of the system which had so long 
reigned triumphant over the mind. Luther, in attacking the 
Romish Church, most undoubtedly struck a heavy tjiough indi- 
rect blow against the system of philosophy supported by that 
Church; and in the enormous outburst of activity which charac- 
terises that wonderful epoch many speculators had revolted against 
the tyranny exercised on human thought under the usurped and 
much-abused name of Aristotle. In the sciences particularly, 
there were many great men, who, " falling upon evil days and 
evil tongues," have come down to posterity as mountebanks, as 
visionaries, or as impostors, but who, had they lived at a more 
auspicious time, would probably command our veneration as lights 
of science and benefactors to their kind: — Coruelius Agrippa, Para- 
celsus. Roger Bacon, GiordLino Bruno, Cardan, and Campanella. 

A vain reliance on the supposed adequate power of human 
ratiocination kept the philosophers of the Middle Ages reasoning 
incessantly in a circle, or diverting their attention from the only 
rational object in philosophy ; that is, as the very word implies, 
" a love for, or search after, truth." They knew not, or they 
despised, the immense practical or physical benefits which might 
flow from a well-directed inquiry into the laws of nature ; and it 
was reserved for the intellect of an Englishman — " divini in- 
genii vir. Franciscus Bacon de Verulamio," as he is styled by 
Leibnitz — to show that science is only valuable in proportion as 
it is practical and productive. 



CHAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 75 

The principal defect of the Aristotelian method was the habit 
which it encouraged of generalising too rapidly upon insuflicient 
grounds : that is, of applying some principle or law of nature to 
phenomena of similar, but not identical, conditions. In short, its 
essential vice was a neglect of the great rule which teaches us to 
observe with particular care the points of resemblance and dis- 
similitude existing between individual phenomena, or classes of 
phenomena. The knowledge possessed by the ancients with 
respect to the true properties of bodies and the nature of physical 
operations was vague and limited enough ; though we cannot be 
surprised at this imperfection of knowledge at a period when the 
mechanical aids to observation were in so primitive a state. For 
want of instruments they transferred to pure reason those duties 
which can only be effectually performed by accurate observation 
and patient experiment. These remarks will perhaps appear to 
possess more weight when we reflect that in those sciences inde- 
pendent of experiment, and whose deductions are to be arrived 
at by the sole exercise of the ratiocinative faculty unaided by 
practical trials, the intellect of the ancient world had advanced so 
far that modern ages have made little or no additions to the mass 
of human knowledge. In geometry, for example, a science which 
investigates abstract properties of space, and which consequently 
is independent of experiment, modern times have hardly, if at all, 
extended the frontiers beyond the limits reached by the schools 
of Alexandria. 

But we have hitherto spoken of the ancient philosophy in its 
pure and normal state ; we must not forget the corruptions to 
which it was in its very nature exposed, and under which it ul- 
timately succumbed. The grand and sublime speculations of 
Aristotle, exhibiting, as we have seen, a noble but misplaced con- 
fidence in the omnipotence of human reason, degenerated in the 
Middle Ages, and under the influences which we have essayed to 
indicate, into a mere spirit of empty subtlety and ingenious trifling ; 
a system at once of timid servility to precedent and prescription, 
and rash and illogical generalization : it was still 

" Uncertain and unsettled, 
Deep versed in books, and shallow in itself, 
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys 
And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge, 
As children gathering pebbles on the sliore." 

The old philosophy, which in its youth and vigour had never 
been fruitful, gradually fell into dotage as its age advanced, and 
its latest period of existence was characterized by the same weak- 
ness which accompanies in man extreme old age — a senile and 
senseless garrulity, a perpetual recurrence of the same worn-out 
topics, and a stiff and obstinate assertion of its own infallibility: 



76 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. IV. 

" Everlasting dictates crowd her tongue, 
Perversely grave, or positively wrong." 

Bacon has most profoundly and acutely compared old systems to 
children: "quippe qui," he says, " ad garriendum prompt! sint, 
gcnerure non possint," 

Our great philosopher was the first to perceive clearly the two 
predominant vices of the older method — its sterility and its sta- 
tionary character; and he was the first to discover a remedy for 
these defects. His own system is characterized above all its other 
merits by the qualities of utility and capability of progressive de- 
velopment. It is, in short, eminently and essentially practical ; 
the great reformer rightly considering that utility is the only mea- 
sure of excellence in any science. He never pretended to be a 
discoverer, and as invariably disclaimed that title, rendering ample 
justice to the merits of the great men who had devoted themselves 
to science, and expressing his conviction that the unproductive 
state of science was not to be attributed to any want of intellect 
in the philosophers who had preceded him, but simply and solely 
to a radical defect in their method. "Francis Bacon thought in 
this manner: The knowledge whereof the world is possessed, 
especially that of nature, exiendeth not to magnitude and cer- 
tainty of ivorksy This is the key to Bacon's whole system, 
and this must excite our gratitude for the eminendy practical cha- 
racter of his mind. It is this circumstance which has given value 
and vitality to what he has produced. How fortunate is it for 
the destinies of science that Bacon was a man of active life, oc- 
cupied during his whole existence with real interests ! it was thus 
that he not only saw, with the clear and steady eye of common 
sense, the exact state of the disease which it was his aim to cure, 
but was enabled to avoid pedantry and vain speculations in the 
administering of the remedy. "There is not anything in being 
or action," to use his own comprehensive words, " which could 
not be drawn and collected into contemplation and doctrine." 

It now remains to examine the means which he adopted to 
bring about this immense revolution in the empire of human 
thought. We shall find that his great principle was to show how 
universally the previous systems neglected the middle links in 
that vast chain of facts connecting the general principle or law of 
nature with the remote and individual phenomena. "Axiomata 
infima non multuni ab experientia nuda discrepant: suprema verb 
ilia et generalissima (qufe habentur) notionaria sunt et abstracta, 
et nil habent solidi. At media sunt axiomata ilia vera et solida 
et viva, in quibus humanse res et fortunse sitfe sunt, et supra hajc 
quoque, tandem ipsa ilia generalissima, talia scilicet qure non ab- 
stracta sint, sed per hsec media vere limitantur." The vice of 
the older philosophy was the passing from one of the extremes 
of this chain, abruptly, and " per saltum," to the other. 



CHAP. IV.] THE NEW PHILOSOPHY. 77 

As we have already mentioned, Bacon has never preferred any 
claim to the character of a scientitic discoverer ; his mission was a 
more exalted and a vaster one : the object of his works was to " note 
the deficiency" in the various species of knowledge composing the 
philosophical systems of the world ; to distinguish with accuracy 
which among the various lines taken by investigation were capa- 
ble of leading to certain, useful, and productive results ; then to 
establish the method to be pursued in following those preferable 
lines when once ascertained ; and finally to give examples or 
specimens of his own method applied and put in action. 

In contemplating this gigantic scheme, it is impossible to ad- 
mire sufficiently the genius which has traced with prophetic accu- 
racy the paths of sciences which were not then in existence; the 
union of good sense and enthusiasm in that mind, which, while 
limiting in one direction the advance of human knowledge, en- 
couraged us to push on, in another, to a development so remote 
as to be even yet undefined ; or the rich and masculine eloquence 
in which these sublime thoughts are communicated. 

Tlie great project which has immortalised the " Lord Chancel- 
lor of human nature" was conceived at a very early age. " Such 
noble ideas are most congenial to the sanguine spirit of youth," 
as Hallam justly remarks, "and to its ignorance of the extent of 
labour it undertakes." Bacon himself mentions, as one of his 
earliest productions, a work bearing the somewhat ambitious title 
'Temporis Partus Maximus,' which is now lost to us, but whicli 
probably contained the germ or embryo of his system. We will 
now give a short account of his great productions, in the hope of 
thus rendering his pliilosophy more intelligible in its unity to our 
readers — a precaution which has been too much neglected by those 
who have written on the subject, and who have treated Bacon's 
works rather as separate and independent treatises, than as parts 
of one vast edifice or creation. 

In 1597 appeared the first edition of his Essays, a little work 
on miscellaneous subjects, which contains perhaps more of wis- 
dom, novelty, and profound remark than any book of equal size 
that was ever composed. The subjects of these short treatises 
are often of a most trite and ordinary kind, but yet it is impossi- 
ble to read them, even for the fiftieth time, without being struck 
by some new and original remark, or seeing some thought placed 
in a new and original light. " The Essays," says Stewart, "are 
the best known and most popular of all his works. It is one of 
those where the superiority of his genius appears to the great- 
est advantage ; the novelty and depth of his reflections often re- 
ceiving a strong relief from the triteness of the subject. It may 
be read from beginning to end in a few hours; and yet, after the 
twentieth perusal, one seldom fails to remark in it something un- 



78 OITTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. IV. 

observed before. This, indeed, is a characteristic of all Bacon's 
writings, and is only to be accounted for by the inexhaustible ali- 
ment they furnish to our own thoughts, and the sympathetic 
activity they impart to our torpid faculties." 

The best way which we can follow to give a clear idea of 
Bacon's gigantic plan for the restoration of philosophy will be to 
present our readers with a sort of programme of the whole system 
of works in which he develops the various parts of his project; 
and this, arranged in a tabular form, will, we think, avoid the 
danger so very natural for persons to fall into with respect to the 
details of Bacon's great intellectual temple. That so vast a design 
could ever have been projected by a single person is more won- 
derful than that some parts of the work were never executed. We 
have, however, enough to prove with M'hat justice the learned 
men of all countries have united, during a, period of nearly two 
centuries and a half, in considering Bacon as the father of experi- 
mental philosophy. Having given this coyispectus or synopsis, 
we shall proceed to examine more in detail the various works 
composing the great Verulamian Cycle, and thus we hope to unite 
the advantages of brevity and distinctness. -We shall see that, as 
these works appeared successively, though each forming, as it 
were, one stone of the Baconian edifice, there were necessarily to 
be expected many repetitions of ideas previously enounced, and 
many anticipations of future arguments. 

Our synoptical arrangement will be as follows: 

The Instau- 
ratio. 

/ I, De Ausmentis Scienliarum. 

i. De Prrerogativis Instantairum. 
ii. *Adminicula Inductionis. 
iii. *llecti(icatio Inductionis. 
iv. *Variatio Inquisiiionis pro natura sub- 
ject!. 
II. Novum Organum. '( ^* *^^ Prcerogativis Naturarum quatenus 
^ ad Inquisit. 

vi. *De Terminis Inquisitionis. 
vii. *Dediictlo ad Praxin. 
'^ ( \ viii. *De Parascevis ad Inquisitioneni. 

- ^ \ ix. *De Seals Axiomatum. 

III. Sylva Sylvarum. 

IV. Scala Intellectus. 

V. * Prodromi. 

Wl. *Philosophia Secunda. 

[The articles marked with an asterisk were never oxecuteJ.] 



CHAP. IV. ] THE INSTAURATIO. 79 

We will now make a few remarks on the nature and subjects 
of the above works, which together form the whole system of the 
Baconian philosophy. The author, before commencing the con- 
struction of his edifice, begins by what may be called clearing the 
ground on which it is to stand. The treatise ' De Augmentis' is 
mainly a Latin version of an English book 'On the Proficience 
and Advancement of Learning,' which had appeared in 1605. It 
contains the outline of the whole system, and points out the de- 
fects perceptible in the methods previously employed in the inves- 
tigation of truth. It would however be a great mistake to con- 
sider the ' De Augmentis' as a mere translation of the treatise just 
alluded to ; it is in many respects almost a new work ; not more 
than two-thirds of the whole being translated, while the remaining 
third contains the result of fresh speculations. Much, however, 
as the ' De Augmentis' is superior to its English predecessor. 
Bacon did not intend it, at least in the form under which we have 
it, to form the first treatise of the ' Instauratio.' That place was 
to be occupied by a book, ' De Partitionibus Scientiae,' intended 
to exhibit the actual slate of human knowledge when he wrote, 
and to show its deficiencies. This general summary of human 
science must therefore be considered,- though not as altogether 
wanting in the 'Instauratio,' yet as but very imperfectly supplied 
by the treatise ' De Augmentis.' 

The second part was to discuss, as .he himself expresses it, 
" the science of a better and more perfect use of reason in the 
investigation of things, and of the true aids of the understand- 
ing ;" this being the new logic, the inductive method, in which 
what is eminently called the Baconian philosoph}'^ consists. This 
is very well expressed in the title wliicb the author has given to 
his work, " Organum" signifying literally "instrument." The 
treatise which we possess under the title of ' Novum Organum' 
is rather a collection of materials for the work than the book it- 
self, as Bacon intended it to stand second in liis list. He calls it 
'Partis Secundaj Summa, digesta in Aphorismos ;' and it con- 
tains the heads or propositions of the projected work. It is 
subdivided into nine distinct portions, of which Bacon has given 
us the titles and the general object, though only the first of these 
subdivisions contains any development of the idea. The first of 
these treated of what in his picturesque language he calls " pre- 
rogative instances," that is, of what phenomena are to be selected 
for investigation, as most likely to conduce, by the speculations 
to which they give rise, to the advantage of the human species. 
This singular term " prcerogativo}," is not used in the ordinary 
English sense of the same word, but contains an allusion to tlie 
" prairogativa centuria" of the Roman people, i. e. the first tribes 
whose votes were taken at the elections of the Coniiiia, and 



80 OUTLINES 01^ GENERAL LITERATURE. [ciIAP. IV. 

whose decision was supposed to influence the suffrages of the 
rest of the citizens. Of these instances fifteen are used to guide 
the intellect, five to assist the senses, and seven to correct the 
practice. And here we may remark a striking instance of Ba- 
con's wonderful mind. In all former theories of logic we had 
been taught to detect and guard against certain fallacies or false 
reasonings, arising from a wrong employment of words, or the 
vicious arrangement of the various parts of an argument. Bacon 
goes farther than this, and has tracked, so to say, these fallacies 
to their true origin — not in the abuse or imperfections of language, 
but to the innate weaknesses of the human mind itself. The 
former dialecticians, like inexperienced physicians, contented 
themselves with applying local or topical remedies to the exter- 
nal and merely symptomatic efflorescence of the disease, while 
Bacon, gifted with a larger spirit and a deeper insight into nature, 
attacks the evil in its internal and invisible source, not cleansing 
the surface only, but purifying the blood. He has classed the 
general causes of logical error under four heads, in a passage 
universally quoted for its brilliancy and truth. These errors of 
reasoning he calls idola, a term often rather absurdly rendered in 
English by the word " idols," but which would be much more 
correctly represented by the expression " images," or, as Bacon 
himself phrases it, " false appearances" — phantoms of the mind, 
in short. These are idola Tribus, idola Specus, idola Fori, and 
idola Theatri ; against all of which it behoves us 'o be upon our 
guard. By fallacies of the Tribe, Bacon indicates the natural 
weaknesses to which every human being is liable; those of the 
Den or Cavern are the errors into which we are betrayed by 
peculiar dispositions and circumstances ; the fallacies of the Mar- 
ket-place are those false conclusions arising from the popular and 
current use of words which represent things otherwise than as 
they really arc ; and the idola of the Theatre, the errors pro- 
ceeding from false systems of philosophy and incorrect reasoning. 
It will be seen from this, as well as from a thousand other in- 
stances, how high is the ground on which Bacon philosophises, 
not merely attempting, as all before him had done, to regulate and 
correct the expression of reason, but aspiring to purify the very 
atmos'phere of thought itself. To proceed with our analysis of 
the ' Novum Organum,' the second subdivision treats of the aids 
to induction; the third of the correction of induction; the fourth 
of varying tlie investigation according to the nature of the subject; 
fifthly, of prerogative natures — i. e. what objects shall be first 
inquired into ; sixthly, of the boundaries of inquiry ; seventhly, 
on the application of inquiry to practice, and what relates to man ; 
eighthly, on the preparation (paraskeusis) for inquiry; and lastly, 
on the ascending and (iescendina- scale of axioms. 



CHAP. IV.] THE INSTAURATIO. 81 

The third division of the ' Instauration' was to contain a com- 
plete system of Natural History ; not however of that science to 
which the name of Natural History is at present confined, but 
Bacon implies in that term an inquiry into the properties of all 
physical bodies, and a faithful and accurate register of all the phe- 
nomena that have ever been observed in man's dealing with natu- 
ral substances. In the title given to this part of the work, ' Sylva 
Sylvarum,' Bacon probably used the word sylva in the sense 
which the ancient philosophers of the Epicurean school attached 
to it — a sense originating in tlie similar signification assigned to 
its Greek radical 'yx?;, that is, primary matter, capable of being 
modified by a plastic force. It would be absurd to suppose that 
the outline here sketched in by Bacon could be filled in by any 
single hand, during any single life, in any age of mankind. He 
had previously published as a separate work his ' Centuries of 
Natural History,' containing about a thousand miscellaneous facts 
and experiments ; and he has given a hundred and thirty particu- 
lar histories which ought to be drawn up for this great work. A 
few of these he has given in a sort of skeleton, as samples rather 
of the method of collecting the facts than of the facts themselves ; 
namely, the History of the Winds, of Life and Death, of Density 
and Rarity, of Sound and Hearing. 

The fourth part, called ' Scala Intellectus,' is also wanting, with 
the exception of a {e\v introductory pages. " By these tables," 
says Bacon, " we mean not such examples as we subjoin to the 
several rules of our method, but types and models, which place 
before our eyes the entire process of the mind in the discovery of 
truth ; selecting various and remarkable instances." 

We now come to the fifth part of the ' Instauratio,' in which 
Bacon had designed to give a specimen of the new philosophy 
which he ho|)ed to raise after a due use of his natural history and 
inductive method, by way of anticipation or sample of tlie whole. 
He calls it 'Prodromi sive Anticipationes Philosophise Secundse ;' 
and though the work does not exist as he projected it, we possess 
various fragments of this part under the titles of ' Cogitationes de 
Natura Rerum,' ' Cogitata et Visa,' ' Filum Labyrinth!,' and a 
iew more ; being probably all that he had reduced to writing. 
The last portion of Bacon's colossal plan was to be a perfect sys- 
tem of philosophy, deduced by a legitimate, sober, and exact inqui- 
ry according to the method whose principles he had established. 
This consummation, however, of his new system Bacon well 
knew was beyond his own mighty powers to execute ; indeed he 
expresses his conviction tliat it was altogether beyond the sphere 
of human thought. "To perfect this last part is above our pow- 
ers and beyond our hopes. We may, as we trust, make no de- 
spicable beginnings ; the destinies of the human race must complete 



82 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. IV. 

it — in such a manner, perhaps, as men, looking only at the pre- 
sent, would not readily conceive. For upon this will depend, 
not only a speculative good, but all the fortunes of mankind, 
and all their power." ' " And with an eloquent prayer," continues 
Hallam, from whose excellent view of the Baconian philosophy 
the foregoing remarks are condensed — "with an eloquent prayer 
that his exertions may be rendered effectual to the attainment of 
truth and happiness, the introductory chapter of the ' Instauratio,' 
which announces the distribution of its portions, concludes. Such 
was the temple, of which Bacon saw in vision before him the 
stately front and decorated pediments, in all their breadth of light 
and harmony of proportion, while long vistas of receding columns 
and glimpses of internal splendour revealed a glory that it was not 
permitted to him to comprehend." 

As the reader will easily conclude from the titles of the various 
parts of the ' Instauratio,' the work was (with the few exceptions 
specified above) published in Latin ; the original conceptions of 
its immortal author having been translated, under his immediate 
inspection, by Herbert, Hobbes, and other persons, "masters of 
the Roman eloquence." The Latin style in which it is written 
is admirably adapted to the subject, and a worthy vehicle for such 
majestic conceptions ; it is in a high degree concise, vigorous, and 
accurate, though by no means free from obscurity, and of course 
in no way to be considered as a model of pure Latinity. Li read- 
ing Bacon, either in his vernacular or more learned dress, we feel 
perpetually conscious of a peculiarity, inevitably accompanying 
the highest genius in its manifestations : — we mean that in him the 
language seems always the flexible and obedient instrument of 
thought ; not, as in the productions of a lower order of mind, its 
rebellious and recalcitrant slave. All authors below the greatest 
seem to use the mighty gift of expression with a certain secret 
timidity, lest the lever should prove too ponderous for the hand 
that essays tO wield it : or, rather, they resemble the rash student 
in the old legend, who was overmastered by the demons which 
he had unguardedly evoked. There is, perhaps, no author so 
metaphorical as Bacon; his whole style is saturated with meta- 
phor ; tiie very titles of his books are frequently nothing else but 
metaphors of the boldest character ; and yet there is not one of 
these figures of speech by which we do not gain a more vivid, 
clear, and rapid conception of the idea which he desires to convey. 
With him such expressions, however beautiful, are never merely 
ornamental : like some of the most exquisite decorations of Gre- 
cian*and of Gothic architecture, what appears introduced into the 
design for the mere purpose of adornment, will ever be found, 
when closely examined, to give strength and stability to the struc- 



CHAP. IV. 3 bacon's style. 83 

tare, of which it seems to inexperienced eyes a mere unessential 
and unnecessary adjunct. 

It would be superfluous here to devote more than a passing 
notice to one objection which has been brouglit against the ori- 
ginality of the Baconian system of philosophy, and against the 
importance of the reformation which it produced in human science. 
The methods recommended by Bacon, say the objectors, have 
always been more or less in use from the very infancy of human 
knowledge. Tlie art of induction, and of advancing from parti- 
cular to general cases in the investigation of the laws of nature, 
was certainly employed and repeatedly insisted on long before the 
Verulamian method was in existence. We have in another place 
strongly insisted on the absurdity of considering Bacon as an in- 
ventor, in the proper sense of tlie word: what he did was not to 
teach us a philosophy, but to show us how to philosophize ; and 
the immeasurable importance of what he did will best be appre- 
ciated by a simple comparison of the progress made in real know- 
ledge during the twenty-two centuries M'hich have elapsed since 
the time of Aristotle, and the acquisitions made in the two hundred 
and nineteen years since the death of Bacon. 

It is quite true that Bacon, as he was not a discoverer in the 
art of investigating truth in general, so neither did he make any 
specific discoveries in any particular department of science. He 
was not a mathematician, nor an astronomer, nor a naturalist, nor 
a metaphysician ; and in this respect we might be disposed to 
echo the ironical criticism of his contemporary Harvey, who, 
competent enough himself to perceive Bacon's deficiency in the 
practical and technical parts of natural science, complained that 
the author of the ' Instauratio' " wrote philosophy like a Lord 
Chancellor." No ! the true obligation which the human race 
must ever feel, to the latest generations, to Bacon is that he did 
what no man else perhaps was ever sufllcienlly gifted to do ; that, 
seated as it were on the pinnacle of his sublime genius, he saw 
distinctly, and mapped out accurately, all that can ever be an ob- 
ject of human investigation; that his far-darting and all-embrac- 
ing intellectual vision took in at once tlie whole expanse of the 
domains of philosophy; nay, that it penetrated into the obscurity 
which brooded over the.distant and unexplored regions of the vast 
country of the mind, and traced, with prophetic sagacity, (he 
paths liiat must be followed by future discoverers, in ages yet 
unl)orn. 

With his own notions on physical subjects there were mingled 
many of the prejudices and erroneous ideas prevalent in his day ; 
but such is the essential and invariable justness of the rules which 
lie has laid down for the conduct of investigation, that these false 
conclusions may be swept away, and replaced by facts more ac- 



84 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. IV. 

curately observed, without any weakening of the system wliich 
he originated. To apply the admirable comparison of Cowley, 
Bacon, though himself not free from the errors of his time, yet 
clearly foresaw the gradual disappearance of those errors : — 

" Bacon, like Moses, led iis forth at last; 
The barren wilderness he pass'd 
Did on the very border stand 
Of the bless'd promis'd land, 
And from the Pisgah-height of his exalted wit 
Saw it himself and show'd us it." 

At the same time, gifted as he was with " the vision and the 
faculty divine," by which he could thus anticipate centuries, and 
behold " not as through a glass darkly, but face to face," sciences 
which had no existence when he wrote, nothing is more admirable 
tlian the common sense which distinguished Bacon's divine intel- 
ligence. The ruling and vital principle, the very life-blood of the 
new philosophy, is the indispensable necessity of accurate and 
complete observation of nature, anterior and preliminary to any 
attempt at theorizing and drawing conclusions. Yet, though he 
was the apostle of experiment, he has no less foreseen and 
warned us against the ill effects that would follow the rash gene- 
ralization founded upon particular and imperfect observation — 
effects which have been very perceptible in modern science, and 
which have tended to give to the knowledge of later days an air 
of superficiality litde less dangerous than the more visionary and 
sophistical tone which characterises the ancient systems. 

But above all, what strikes us as the most admirable peculiarity 
of Bacon's pliilosophy is the spirit of ulilily which runs through 
and modifies the whole design. We do not mean utility in the 
low and limited sense of a care for the development of man's 
merely physical comforts and advantages ; the exercise and cul- 
tivation of the highest faculties of our being, the enlarging of our 
spliere of inlelleclual pleasures, tlie strengthening of our moral obli- 
gations, the refining and elevating of our perception of the beautiful 
— all these Bacon has treated, and would have exhausted, had 
they not been as infinite as the soul itself. On many of these 
subjects — on the beau ideal, for example — it will be hardly too 
much to say that he has left nothing for future speculators. 

Another peculiarity which we cannot forbear noticing, as form- 
ing one of the striking features of Bacon's intellectual character, 
is the circumstance that his writings will not be found in any high 
degree apophthcgmaiic : that is, the reader will not be likely to 
meet with many of those short, extractable, and easily remem- 
bered sentences, or gnomai, which pass from mouth to mouth as 
weight)^ maxims, or separate masses of truth — the gold coins, if 
Ave may so style them, of llie intellectual exchange. Many such 



CHAP. IV.] bacon's minor WORKS. 85 

are undoubtedly to be found in his pages, but they are certainly 
less plentiful in Bacon than in -other great writers ; but we shall 
generally find these passages so imbedded and fixed in the argu- 
ment of which such propositions form a part, as not to be ex- 
tracted without manifest loss to their value and significancy. In 
consequence of this, Bacon is one of those authors who must be 
read through to be correctly judged and worthily appreciated. 
Nor will any aspiring and truly generous mind begrudge the 
labour which will attend this exercise of the highest faculties with 
which God has endowed it ; it is surely no mean privilege to 
be thus admitted into the laboratory and workshop of the new 
philosophy, and to behold — no indifferent spectator — the sublime 
alchemy by which experience is transmuted into truth. 

Among the minor works of the illustrious Chancellor it may 
not be improper to mention two or three of the principal. We 
shall specify, first, a very curious treatise ' On the Wisdom of 
the Ancients,' being an attempt to explain the classical mytho- 
logy, by a system of moral and political interpretation, much less 
founded on probability than calculated to elevate, in our eyes, the 
degree of knowledge possessed by the pagan world. The follow- 
ing is the judgment, respecting this work, attributed to Balzac, 
from one of whose letters it is supposed to be a quotation : 
" Croyons done, pour I'amour de Chancelier Bacon, que toutes 
les folies des anciens sont sages, et tons leurs songes mysteres ; 
et de celles-Ia qui sont estimees pures fables, il n'y en a pas une, 
quelque bizarre et exfravagante qu'elle soil, qui n'ait son fonde- 
nient dans I'histoire, si Ton en veut croire Bacon, et qui n'ait eie 
deguisee de la sorle par les sages du vieux temps, pour la rendre 
plus utile aux peuples." Another work is entitled the ' Felicities 
of the Keign of Queen Elizabeth ;' and a third is a production 
of greater importance, a ' History of King Henry VII,,' written 
probably in a courtly desire to gratify King James, who was, as 
everybody knows, ambitious of tlie reputation of the pacific glo- 
ries of a wise and tranquil administrator, and whose character 
in this respect would find a fiattering parallel in the unwarlike 
reign of the politic Henry. Besides these, he is the author of a 
philosophical fiction entitled " The New Atlantis." 

The glory of Bacon, as he himself had predicted, rose gradually 
but steadily on the literary horizon of Europe. It may however 
be complained (and this is not a circumstance to be wondered at) 
that his works were often rather vaguely eulogized than accurately 
studied: the profound nature of their subject, and the vastness of 
their design, were likely to have much limited the number of their 
readers ; and in consequence many erroneous opinions became 
prevalent, not only respecting the true value of the Baconian re- 
volution in science, but even respecting the nature of the system 



86 OITLINES OF GENERAL LITERATl'RE. [cHAP. V. 

itself. It is unnecessary to say, that what the great philosopher 
gained in this way from vague and unintelligent praise he lost in 
true glory, which can only be founded on justice. It was reserved 
for various illustrious metaphysicians of the Scottish school " to 
turn," in Hallanvs words, "that which had been a blind venera- 
tion into a rational worship." These profound and elegant writers, 
Reid, Stewart, Robison, and Playlair, by clothing the philosophy 
of Bacon in the language of the nineteenth century, have de[)rived 
it of whatever repulsive and diflicult features it may have retained 
from its being written in a dead language, and from its somewhat 
complicated arrangement and subdivisions ; while some of the 
greatest among modern experimental philosophers have been 
proud to draw, from the practical observations and more recent 
improvements of astronomy and other branches of phvsics, new 
illustrations of the justness of Bacon's predictions, new conclu- 
sions clearing up obscure passages, and new proofs of the truth 
of his system. It is delightful to see experiment thus the willing 
handmaid of theory, and Herschel paying practical worship at the 
shrine of Bacon. 



CHAPTER V. 

ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 

Comparison between the Greek and Jledisval dramas — Similarity of their origin 
— Illusion in the Drama — Mysteries or Miracle- Inlays — Their Subject and Con- 
struction — Moralities — The Vice — Intcrhules — The Four P."s — Fust Regular 
Dramas — Comedies — Tragedies — Early English Tiieatres — Scenery — Cos- 
tume — State of the Dramatic Profession. 

There are very few fpsthetic subjects upon which more con- 
troversy has been raised than upon the respective merits of va- 
rious schools of the Drama; and certain! v there are not many 
Avhich have excited more critical asperity than the long-vexed 
question as to the comparative merits of the two great dramatic 
schools, to which Schlegel has assigned the not inapposite titles 
of Classical and Romantic. But both parlies seem to have for- 
gotten the similar origin and history of the two schools which 
ihey represent as so ditferent, nay, even as so opposed ; and to 
have pretty generally overlooked the important fact that the pecu- 
liarities of structure which respectively characterise the two 
classes of productions, so falsely consitiered as antagonistic, are 
really not essential or inherent, but arise from merely technical or 



CHAP, v.] GREEK AND MEDIAEVAL DRAMAS. 87 

superficial circumstances. Thus, for example, the Greek tragic 
drama was originally a religious ceremony, and, however modified, 
never entirely lost that sacred character. The personages of the 
Attic stage were almost always to a certain degree mythic: that 
is, they were almost invariably heroic ; invested, either by anti- 
quity, by the greatness of their exploits, or their immediate rela- 
tions with the deities, with something of a religious character; 
and it is easily conceivable that, with such a people as the Greeks, 
the boundary-line between tlie god and the hero was not very dis- 
tinctly traced : Theseus, for instance, 'vas very little less a god 
than Hermes, and Apollo very little more divine than Orestes ; 
there were indeed many characters, frequently produced on the 
Athenian stage, who, like Hercules, obviously partook of the two 
qualities. Thus the Attic 'ragedy always retained a good deal of 
the historico-mythic character — a character which pervaded even 
the technical details of its construction, performance, and raise en 
scene. 

Indiscriminate admiration, however, has discovered beauties 
in merely accidental and unimportant peculiarities, and has at- 
tempted to derive from the necessary laws of art rules which 
were founded upon circumstance or convenience. Thus, becau.«e 
the Greek theatres were of colossal dimensions, and consequently 
uncovered, enthusiastic critics have discovered beauty and gran- 
deur in the contrivances employed to exaggerate the size of the 
actor and increase the sound of his voice: because their construc- 
tion, and also the imperfection of the arts of mechanism, together 
also perhaps with some prejudices connected with the gravity 
and even sacredness of these spectacles, precluded them from 
changing the scene, attempts have been made to prove that the 
fixed scene — or unity of place — is an essential law of the dramatic 
art, and that consequently the modern plays are necessarily and 
demonstrably barbarous. It is exceedingly curious to observe 
with what ingenuity the so-called classical critics have defended 
the adherence to the Three Unities in dramatic composition. 
Their reasoning has all along been founded upon the supposition, 
that in the dramatic art the source of pleasure is to be found 
in illusiofi, and that consequently the preservation of the uni- 
ties is necessary. Now, we will not maintain in this place 
the very false and low view of the true nature and object of art 
involved in this supposition ; we will not show its fallacy when 
applied to painting, to music, to sculpture, or show that illusion — 
or rather delusion, a cheating of the senses — is never at all con- 
templated in works of any degree of excellence; we will not 
repeat the obvious fact that illusion, properly so called, never was 
and never can be attained, or even approximatively reached, in 
any dramatic work whatever, and that, even could it be attained, 



88 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. V. 

the result would be precisely subversive of the only conceivable 
end of the drama, viz: the production of pleasure. We will go 
at once to the point, and say that this principle of illusion, as an 
object to be attained by the dramatist, was never at all recognised 
by the Greeks themselves. It is true that the Apollo or the Venus 
might be rendered by a coating of rose-pink much more like a 
man and a woman; but the object of the sculptor was to elevate 
and gratify our imagination, and not to cheat our eye. Had the 
latter been the aim of sculpture, a wax doll wouhl be a finer pro- 
duction than the noblest marble that ever breathed under the chisel 
of Phidias. 

We have only to read a Greek play to see that nothing can be 
less artificial as a contrivance for producing mere illusion. The 
formality and regularity of the language, the simple and straight- 
forward character of the dialogue, the lyric portion or chorus, 
written in a diflerent dialect and more splendid imagery than the 
rest of the work, the total neglect of probability and even possi- 
bility in the arrangement of the events, time and space perpetually 
annihilated, and every conceivable rule of human conduct and 
prudence incessantly violated — all these things sufficiently prove to 
us that the great Greek dramatists never so much as contemplated 
the possibility of producing what we call illusion. 

No man, we flatter ourselves, ever admired more fervently than 
we do the admirable genius and exquisite taste which characterise 
the Greek tragedies ; their dignity, their pathos, the wonderful 
depth and acuteness of the remarks with which they are crowded, 
the dazzling splendour of the lyric portions so nobly contrasted 
with the pure marble-like severity of the dialogue, the rich de- 
scriptions (put into the mouth of the messenger in most of them) 
of the terrible catastrophe with which they conclude, and which 
the Greeks did not permit to take place on the stage, from a scru- 
ple founded, we are persuaded, not on a principle of taste, but of 
religion — these are merits which we can allow with enthusiastic, 
readiness ; but they are merits very distinct from that principle of 
illusion which has been considered as having guided the mighty 
art of ^schylus, of Sophocles, and of Euripides. 

If we examine into the early history of that Romantic Drama 
which has become universal over the whole of modern Europe, 
and which has in our own century finally expelled the so-called 
Classicism from its last entrenchments on the stage of France, 
we shall see how singularly its origin and first development re- 
sembled the rise of the Grecian Tragedy. Both species of com- 
position were at first purely religious ; both were performed on 
solemn occasions in temples ; both were distinguished for the 
simplicity of their structure, and for a total neglect of the much- 
vaunted principle of illusion ; both were accompanied by a certain 



CHAP. V.J THE MEDIAEVAL DRAMA. 89 

proportion of lyric declamation, executed by a number of persons 
who occupied a middle or intermediate position between the 
principal dramatic characters on the stage (the protagonists) and 
the audience who witnessed the solemn show. 

The food, the pabulum., of the dramatic art was in the two 
cases as different as were the religion, the manners, the modes of 
thought and action at the two periods which we have thus con- 
trasted. The Greek dramatist drew his materials from the rich 
storehouse of pagan mythology, the black annals of his ancient 
kings, and the legends of his national heroes: in these he found 
ample materials for his scenes; and the whole was bound together 
by one pervading principle, in the highest degree moving and 
sublime — the over-ruling and incessant action of the dramatic fate. 
These grand and awful events were familiar to the audience from 
their infancy ; they were calculated to gratify to the highest degree 
the national vanity and patriotic enthusiasm : every Athenian felt 
himself the countryman, many the descendants, of Theseus or of 
CEdi[)us; and wiien we reflect upon the intensity of the patriotism 
which characterised the citizens of the little republics of Greece, 
together with the delicate sense of the beautiful which seemed 
peculiarly innate in the Hellenic character, we shall find that their 
dramatists were as amply provided with materials for their art as 
with rewards for its triumphant exercise. 

In the Middle Ages the external manifestations of the art were 
all changed, but the art itself remained the same. The rude popu- 
lations of chivalric Europe, the serfs of England, France, and 
Germany, could have felt but very imperfectly any sentiments 
addressed to tlieir patriotism. Ignorant, barbarous, and oppressed, 
how could men love their country, who could not call their wives 
and children their own ? How could men, reduced to a mere 
brutish state of animal obedience, feel their hearts swell within 
them at the mimic representation of great exploits? As to the 
mere abstract perception of the beautiful, such a feeling could not 
exist in their minds. What strings were left in the human heart 
undeadened and capable of responding to the touch of genius? 
We answer, the sense of wonder. Catholicism, with all its mira- 
cles, its legends, its enthusiasm, had supplanted the paganism of 
classical antiquity. AVe are not inclined to consider the credulity 
of the ancients, at least at the period when the Greek drama 
reached its highest pitch of splendour, as very deeply seated, or 
likely to modify very profoundly the character of the Athenian 
people. Their credulity was rather of the imagination ; that of 
the Middle Ages was of the heart. What a difference between 
the airy grace and sensuous allegory of the pagan mytholosry, 
where belief was merely a matter of assent, involving no practi- 
cal change of conduct, and offering no promises, or very faint 

8^ 



90 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. V. 

ones, of a future existence, with that deep, all-pervading, and 
solemn religion which offered to the oppressed serf of the Middle 
Ages his only consolation in this life, together with his mighty- 
hope and onlooking to the next! The very superstitions, too, of 
the time, the huge mass of striking and yet fantastic imagery 
which composed a world of legend, exhibit an example of the 
fact that in depriving the human mind of some of its senses (as 
takes place in those of the body) we only add intensity and power 
to those we leave behind. 

The religious dramas of the Middle Ages were nothing but an 
embodiment of Christianity as it appeared to the simple imagina- 
tion of those rude times. They were often little else but the 
narration of some biblical or legendary miracle, rudely dramatised, 
and often in the language of Scripture. They are supposed to 
have originated in the recitals of pilgrims, returning from their 
long wanderings in distant and unknown lands with an abundant 
stock of wonders, perilous adventures and hair-breadth 'scapes, 
gorgeous descriptions of the magnificence of the East, enthralling 
tales of persecution and wild idolatries. With these the "palmer 
graye" would collect a crowd about him, and keep his simple 
hearers listening with unwearied wonder hour after hour; just 
as the professed tale-teller of the East enchants his grave and 
bearded audience in the coffee-houses of Damascus, or the ragged 
improvvisatore of Naples enchains his circle of boatmen and 
lazzaroni. That such tales should have by degrees taken a dra- 
matic form is not surprising; still less so that the Church should 
have very soon perceived the efficacy of such representations, not 
only as instruments of instruction for the people, but also as a 
means for extending the authority of the priesthood, and increas- 
ing the revenues of the ecclesiastical institutions. The people 
were unable to read, and their ideas respecting the Scriptural 
history were exceedingly imperfect; and the priests of the Middle 
Ages were far too well acquainted with the human heart not to 
know the truth of the Horatian precept — 

" Segni&s irritant animum demissa per aures, 
Qub.m quae sunt oculia submissa fidelibus." 

The Church therefore encouraged, as far as possible, the strong 
taste early developed for the religious dramas, viewing them as at 
once a powerful medium of religious instruction, and as an inex- 
haustible source of profit and influence; and we find them used as 
a very important mechanism for raising the immense sums destined 
to the support of the crusades. At first they were of a purely re- 
ligious character; the subjects were always either events of the 
biblical history itself, or else extracts from the legends of the saints. 
The representation of these dramas was very early taken, by the 
profound policy of the hierarchy, out of the hands of the laity ; 



CHAP, v.] THE MEDIAEVAL DRAMA : MYSTERIES. 91 

and the performance was carried on in the church itself, the actors 
being priests, and the splendour of the spectacle augmented by 
the use of the rich vestments and ornaments of the clergy. 

Here we may clearly see the singular resemblance existing be- 
tween the Greek tragedy and the religious plays of the Middle 
Ages. Both were performed in a sacred spot ; the subjects of both 
were drawn from what was considered, at the respective periods, 
to be most holy and venerable ; both were placed before the 
spectator with the greatest magnificence attainable ; and the spirit 
of mingled patriotism and religion, which it was the object of the 
Greek theatre to excite, was certainly little inferior in intensity to 
the credulous and simple awe with which the rude audiences of 
Catholic times must have witnessed the great mysteries of their 
religion represented before the altar of a cathedral. In fact, we 
cannot but remark that the very name of this species of spectacle 
is strongly corroborative of the truth of our parallel; they were 
called '''"mysteries'''' and ^^ miracles.'" Even the division of the 
stage recalls something of the rigour and complexity of the Greek 
scene: it was divided into three platforms; the upper being re- 
served for the appearance of God, angels, and glorified spirits ; 
the next below it, to the human personages of the drama; and 
the lowest, devoted to the devils, being a representation of the 
yawning mouth of hell — the " alta ostia Ditis" — a black and 
gloomy cavern, vomiting flames and sulphureous smoke, through 
which incessantly ascended the howling of the damned, and by 
which the evil spirits made their exits and their entrances, rising 
to tempt and torture humanity, or plunging back with the bodies 
of their victims. In all these peculiarities it is impossible not to 
be struck with the resemblance between the drama of the Middle 
Ages and that of classical antiquity. Nor can we fail to remark the 
innumerable traces left by the religious dramas upon the art of 
this period. The much-agitated question of the meaning of the 
singular title given by Dante to his great work could hardly have 
been raised had the critics remembered that the commedia of the 
"gran padre Alighier" is nothing else but a mystery in a narra- 
tive form ; and that the three divisions of Hell, Purgatory, and 
Paradise correspond exactly with .the three stages of the religious 
dramas. 

The subjects of these dramas were generally taken from the 
most striking and pathetic passages of the Bible history ; the 
Creation, the Deluge, the Fall of Man, the Sacrifice of Abraham, 
the Massacre of the Innocents, the Crucifixion ; no subject ap- 
pears to have been too solemn or too vast for the attempt of tliis 
bold but barbarous art. They never shrank from introducing 
upon the stage the most sublime personages ; the Deity himself, 
the Saviour, the patriarchs, all figure in these singular dramas. 



92 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. V. 

They seem not to have felt that species of awe which would now 
prevent an author from presenting, in a visible form, such imper- 
sonations — an attempt which not even the genius of Goethe 
could succeed in rendering successful. At such early periods, 
■when the critical faculty had not yet dried up in man the springs 
of wonder and belief, there could have been neither real nor ima- 
ginary disrespect in this freedom. They followed as closely as 
they could the march, and even the language, of the Scriptural 
narration, and would probably have felt it as derogatory to the 
dignity of their subject to omit any detail of the Bible history, as 
we should find it dangerous, or even reprehensible, to follow those 
details with too great a fidelity. 

These compositions were for the most part written, as might 
be expected, in the popular metre of the various countries which 
produced them ; for it must not be forgotten that such represent- 
ations were the favourite amusement of mankind in all the coun- 
tries of Europe during a very long period. Germany, France, 
Italy, Portugal, and Spain — in short, there is not any country 
which does not possess a large collection of these singular pro- 
ductions. 

They were sometimes of inordinate length, and in many cases 
lasted even several days : there is one in existence, on the subject 
of the Creation, which occupied in the performance a period as long 
as the event which it represented, and consequently the spectators 
of this mystery gratified their wonder during a period of six suc- 
cessive days. We may inquire how the authors of these pro- 
ductions could have succeeded in introducing anything ludicrous 
and comic into dramas whose principal action was so sojemn and. 
supernatural. liudicrous scenes, however, they were obliged to 
have ; for the people were in far too rude a stale to be able to sit list- 
ening for so long a time to purely religious and moral declamation. 
To attain this end they hit upon the happy expedient of making 
the Devil the never-failing comic character in those cases where 
the nature of the subject precluded the possibility of introducing 
a mere human buflbon. The devil was the butt and clown of the 
performance, and, being generally represented in a light at once 
terrific and contemptible, this circumstance has probably originat- 
ed the very curious part played in the popular legends by the 
Father of Evil. The malignant spirits, in ail systems of my- 
thology and popular belief, with the single exception of Christi- 
anity, are presented in colours darkly and tremendously sublime, 
and certainly their agency is never represented as accompanied 
by circumstances in any way mean or ridiculous. Christianity, 
however, the vital principle of which is the victory of truth over 
the powers of evil, has originated the popular character of a ma- 
licious and ugly fiend, whose machinations are defeated by a very 



CHAP, v.] THE MEDIEVAL DRAMA: MYSTERIES. 93 

moderate degree of ingenuity and address. How far the obscur- 
er superstitions of paganism which still remained in the popular 
imagination may have conduced to this curious anomaly, it is not 
at present our object to inquire: it is not improbable that it arose 
in some measure from an ancient belief, propagated by many of 
the Christian fathers, that the deities of the various pagan my- 
thologies were in reality evil spirits allowed for a time to mislead 
and delude the human race ; and also the first propagators of 
Christianity, finding the notions of polytheism so deeply and ine- 
radicably implanted in the mind of man, contented themselves 
with representing as malignant the nature of those beings whose 
existence they could not disprove, and were probably themselves 
very little inclined to deny. The devil, therefore, of popular be- 
lief — not the haughty and beautiful creation of Milton, but the 
hideous demon, the "lubber fiend," of Ariosto, with his horns 
and hoofs and tail — was the comic character of the mysteries; 
to which, wherever possible, they added other bufioons of a like 
ludicrous colour, generally selected among the wicked human per- 
sonages of the drama. Thus, in the miracle-play of the ' Mas- 
sacre of the Innocents,' the satellites of Herod — his knights, as 
they are called with a laughable anachronism, and who are repre- 
sented as swearing by " Mahound," or Mahomet — are exposed to 
the alternate laughter and detestation of the audience. Nor did 
these old authors neglect those broad and general subjects of satire 
presented by human weaknesses, and which are found in the 
writings of all periods. The quarrels of matrimony, and the 
miseries undergone by henpecked husbands, as they are subjects 
of all ages, and " come home to the business and bosoms of men," 
have excited the laughter of mankind in every epoch: undoubt- 
edly there were scolding wives before the flood, but it is curi- 
ous to see a virago forming one of the " dramatis personae" in a 
miracle-play on the subject of the Deluge. In the very singular 
drama to which we have just alluded, " Noe's Wif" is a charac- 
ter of a purely comic nature, and is represented, in a scene by no 
means devoid of coarse drollery, as refusing to enter the ark un- 
less she is allowed to bring with her " her gossips every one," 
whom she swears {by St. John J) that she loves with great affec- 
tion. In a German mystery, which we believe has been printed, 
Cain and Abel are introduced as examined by the Almighty, in 
the presence of Adam, as to their proficiency in the " liOrd's 
Prayer." Abel is prompted by our Saviour, and gets through his 
task pretty respectably ; but Cain, who is secretly instigated by 
the devil standing behind him to say the prayer backwards, is very 
properly and condignly flogged, having previously received divers 
cuffs from his father for refusing to take his hat off! We see, 
therefore, that the humour of these pieces, however natural and 



94 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. V. 

enjoue, was of no very refined character ; the pathetic passages, 
it is fair to add, sometimes reach a high degree of excellence. In 
an English mystery on the subject of Abraham's sacrifice, the 
scene between the father and the son is exceedingly tender and 
beautiful, and the speech of Isaac, in particular, of very great 
merit. In short, these works show that tlie heart of man, 
however imperfect be his civilization, has always some chords 
which vibrate responsive to the touch of nature. 

We have hitherto been speaking of the mystery or miracle-play 
in its pure and original form, as a representation exclusively re- 
ligious in its subject and in the mode and place of its perform- 
ance. It will now be our business to trace, as rapidly as possible, 
the changes by which it was gradually transformed into the ro- 
mantic drama of modern times. It may easily be conceived that 
so favourite and so profitable a species of entertainment as the 
stage could not long be monopolised by the Church. In the 
mind of man there has ever been an inherent taste for dramatic 
impersonations ; there is no age so rude, no country so barbarous, 
as not to possess some amusement of a dramatic nature ; indeed, 
it may be said that the very rudeness of an age is itself a measure 
of what may be called its dramatic sensibility. Children, as we 
see, are perpetually acting ; and the childhood of nations is like 
that of individuals ; at that period the imagination is in the highest 
degree excitable, while at the same time the judgment and the 
comparing faculty are not yet developed. 

The mysteries, then, from being a purely religious exhibition, 
gradually degenerated into the moralities, a species of entertain- 
ment which is one step farther towards the embodiment of ima- 
ginary personages. In these pieces the historical or theological 
characters of the Scripture were supplanted by personifications of 
abstract qualities — the virtues, the vices, the sentiments of human 
nature. In the morality, instead of Moses, of Adam, of the Holy 
Spirit, we have Justice, Mercy, Temperance, Folly, Gluttony, 
and Vice. In fact, this last character, whose language and costume 
were ludicrous, enters into the composition of every morality as 
the clown or buff"oon. We are not, however, to suppose that the 
devil was dismissed : in spite of the less religious character of the 
morality as compared with the mystery, Satan was far too droll 
a personage to be thus cashiered — he is retained ; and the greater 
part of the comic scenes consist of dialogues between the Devil 
and the Vice, the latter of whom is generally represented as baf- 
fling and beating his infernal antagonist, who, however, some- 
times enjoys his revenge, and carries off" the Vice at the end of the 
piece. It should be remembered that the Vice was habited in 
the motley, and wore the coxcomb, of the jester of this period, 



CHAP. V.3 THE MEDIEVAL DRAMA: MORALITIES. 95 

and armed with the wooden sword which figures on the stage even 
down to the present day as the wand of Harlequin. 

Indeed, Harlequin himself, and that other pleasant Italian, Pul- 
cinella — the universal type, under some name or other, of popu- 
lar drollery and satire — are supposed by the learned to trace their 
pedigree to the moralities of the Middle Ages : so few in number 
are the forms under which the human mind embodies its crea- 
tions. The old Italian comedy, the ancient Spanish comedy, in 
fact all the dramatic types of modern Europe, bear indisputable 
traces of a very high antiquity indeed ; nay, some antiquaries 
have even gone so far as to see in Arleccliino, in Pulcinella, in the 
clown of the English stage, and in the Gracioso of the Spanish, 
the principal characters of tlie Atellan farces, which the Romans 
laughed at so heartily, and, not stopping even here, have consi- 
dered this pleasant family of drolls as representing various person- 
ages in the celebration of the mysteries of Eleusis, and tlie yet 
remoter worship of the Cabiri! 

The subjects of the moralities were, as the name implies, of 
an ethical nature, intended to inculcate principles of virtue ; and 
however imperfect, as a means of exciting sympathy and interest 
in the spectator, were the cold impersonations of abstract ideas 
which composed their "dramatis personae," these works are by no 
means deficient either in ingenuity of plot, or in the occasionally 
skilful delineation of character. They were generally performed 
either by students at the universities, or by the great municipal 
bodies in towns, to celebrate some solemn festival, or to do ho- 
nour to some exalted personage. In the former case they were 
often in Lalin ; and in the latter — that is, when produced by the 
members of the trades, mestiers, or craft-corporations of the cities 
— they were either acted on a temporary stage erected in the 
open air, or on a moving platform on wheels ; thus forming part 
of those splendid processions of which we read so much. 

Among the more remarkable of these compositions which have 
come down in the English language to our times, it will be ne- 
cessary merely to cite the tides of two or three ; as the name of 
tlie piece will give us in general a pretty good idea of its subject 
and contents. ' Lusty Juventus,' in which the hero, a personifi- 
cation of the abstract idea of youth, is seduced by the various pas- 
sions and vices, and protected by the opposing virtues. Odier 
examples will be found in ' Impatient Poverty,' ' Hit the Nail on 
the Head,' ' The Hog hath lost his Pearl,' &c. &c. These mo- 
ralities imperceptibly merged into another species of drama, less 
ambitious in its construction, less regular in its [)lot, and admitting 
a good deal more drollery and humour. These were the inter- 
ludes, which formed a favourite entertainment in the days of 
Henry VIII., and v.diich were much shorter and of a much mer- 
rier character than the solemn and scholastic morality. Of these 



96 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. CcHAP. V. 

a noted and most prolific author was John Heywood, a sort of 
jester at the court of the king just mentioned, and whose wild 
farces exhibit extraordinary powers of humour and even wit. 
Heywood was an enthusiastic Catholic, and his rude dramas bear 
innvimerable marks of that great war of polemics and ridicule 
which preceded the Reformation. In times of religious dissen- 
sion, every province of literature, even the least fitted to be made 
the scene of religious warfare, is invaded by the contests of the- 
ology ; and a complete collection might be made of moralities and 
interludes of this time, written to maintain the opinions of the 
Catholics on one side, and of the Reformers on the other, in 
which plentiful volleys of ridicule and abuse are directed by the 
author against the partisans of the opposite Church. As the name 
implies, the interlude is properly a short dramatic scene, intended 
to be performed in tjie intervals of some greater ceremony or fes- 
tival. It was originally represented in the pauses unavoidably 
occurring during the representation of the solemn morality, or, as 
a kind of entr'acte, in the vacant intervals which frequently took 
place in the long festivities of the Middle Ages. It is thus that 
at the present day dramatic representations are introduced in 
China to enliven the guests between the courses of their intei*- 
minable banquets; and the interlude, we know, was frequently 
performed in the great halls of our ancestors on festival occasions. 
These representations were almost always of a broadly comic 
character, and were frequendy, like the satiric dramas of the Attic 
stage, a species of parody or burlesque upon the graver action of 
the piece in the intervals of which they were performed. One of 
the drollest of these dramatic caricatures is entitled 'The Four 
P'sr'it is in a rude kind of jingling, doggrel verse, and represents 
a species of match made by its four interlocutors — the four P's, 
from whence it takes its title — a pedler, a pilgrim, a 'potieary, 
and a pardoner — as to who can tell the greatest lie: after a good 
deal of astonishing mendacity, the pardoner asserts, as if acci- 
dentally, that he never saw a woman out of temper; and this 
being unanimously agreed to be the greatest lie ever heard, the 
])rize is awarded to the asserter of so tremendous a falseiiood. 

It is obvious that the dramatic art was now upon the very verge 
of the regular Comedy and Tragedy ; and the process of gradual 
improvement can be traced no farther from the allegorical per- 
sonages of the morality to the creation of specific human cha- 
racters and tlie representing of actual human life. We have now 
reached the period of the first regular comedies, propesly so 
called ; the excellence of which, it is but proper to remark, was 
such as to give noble earnest of the splendid triumphs in this way 
of writing which tbe English literature was destined afterwards to 
achieve. Probably in the reign of Henry VIII., but certainly not 



CHAP. V. j FIRST REGULAR DRAMAS. 97 

later than 1551, Nicholas Udall produced his * Ralph Royster 
Doysler,' the first comedy in the language, in which the ingenuity 
of the plot, the nature of the characters, and the ease of the 
dialogue are all carried to a high degree of perfection. The dra- 
matis personam are all taken from middle life, and the play gives 
us a most admirable picture of the manners of the citizens of 
London at tliis period. It is written in a very loose and conver- 
sational species of rhymed couplet, and was probably performed 
by tlie scliolars of Westminster, of which school the author was 
master. About ten years afterwards we meet with another 
comedy, long supposed to have been the earliest in the language : 
this is ' Gammer Gurlon's Needle,' and is a rich piece of rustic 
drollery, the plot turning upon the loss of a needle with which 
Gammer [commere?) Gurlon was mending the breeches of her 
man Hodge, and which loss is attributed by a beggar — the clever 
and rascally intrigant of the piece — to the dishonesty of a neigh- 
bour, between whom and Mistress Gurton there occurs a most 
admirable scolding scene. After a considerable period of con- 
sternation, misunderstanding, and quarrelling in all quarters (for 
we must think that a needle at this period, and in a remote village, 
was a serious loss), and after we have been amused with Hodge's 
terrors in a scene where the Beggar proceeds to call up the Devil 
in order to discover the needle, the missing article is found, stick- 
ing in the breeches, by Hodge, who roars out with mingled pain 
and delight when its prick announces the recovery of the long- 
lost little implement. This droll production is full of a real verve 
and rude richness of language, and the characters are delineated 
with broad strokes of truth and rustic animation. It was the 
work of John Still, who ultimately became Bishop of Bath 
and Wells, and was probably acted at the university. Its versi- 
fication — for it is, like its predecessor, in rhyme — is rather more 
loose and irregular than that of ' Ralph Roysler Doyster,' and is 
an excellent vehicle for the rustic shrewdness and broad humour 
which distinguish it. This curious play has been compared to 
the famous comedy of ' Patelin,' which was one of the earliest 
comic efforts of the French stage, but we think the English piece 
superior in point of vigour and naturalness. 

While comedy, as we have just seen, appears to have made a 
very striking and rapid advance in this period of English litera- 
ture, it is singular enough that the earliest tragedies in our lan- 
guage should exhibit all the poverty, stifTness, and formality of 
manner consequent upon a close imitation of the classic models. 
The early dramatic authors, although they had sense and taste 
enough to look for the materials of their comedy into the abun- 
dant mine of oddity and humour offered by the domestic life of 
their own country, did not venture, in their tragic delineations, 
9 



98 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. V. 

to cast off the rigid yoke of classic form and precedent. The 
tragedy of ' Ferrex and Porrex,' written by Thomas Sackville, 
afterwards Earl of Dorset, and Thomas Norton, was acted by 
the students of the Inner Temple before Queen Elizabeth in the 
year 1561. It is considered to be the earliest tragedy in the 
language. Its subject is founded upon a legend of the almost 
fabulous epochs of British history, and the leading incident re- 
sembles that of the story of Eteocles and Polynices, which has 
again been repeated by Schiller in his ' Braut von Messina;' a 
tale, singularly enough found in the annals of various nations and 
distinct periods. ' Ferrex and Porrex' exhibits in all its details 
a servile adherence to the technical forms of the classic drama, in 
the fewness of the persons, the uniform gravity and philosophic 
stateliness of the language, and, above all, in the retention of the 
chorus. Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between 
the formal solemnity of the dialogue of this play — the perpetual 
severity of the style — the apophthegms with which it is crowded — 
" Dry chips of short-lung'd Seneca — " 

the intense care to preserve a tone of regal dignity which prevails 
throughout the work, and the freedom, richness, and idiomatic 
humour which distinguish the comedies written previous to its 
appearance — qualities which were afterwards recalled to tragedy 
by the great authors of the Shakspearian school. 

After ' Ferrex and Porrex' we pass rapidly over a long list of 
works, all more or less characterised by the same classic stiffness 
and adherence to dramatic dignity, and which were in almost 
every case either direct adaptations from other languages, or, 
when founded upon events in the early history of the country, 
alwaj's composed upon the same classical models. After enume- 
rating a few of them, we will proceed to give an idea of the 
mechanism of the theatres at the dawning of our dramatic litera- 
ture, and the general condition of the art previous to the appearance 
of Shakspeare : — ' Damon and Pythias,' written by Richard Ed- 
wards, and acted at Oxford in 1566; the comedy of ' The Sup- 
poses,' taken from 'I Suppositi' of Ariosto, and 'Jocasta,' a 
tragedy, imitated from Euripides ; ' Tancred and Gismunda,' 
acted in 1568 ; ' Promos and Cassandra,' ten years afterwards, 
written by George Whetstone ; and a number of historical plays, 
as 'The Troublesome reign of King John,' 'The famous Vic- 
lories of Henry V.,' 'The Chronicle History of Leir, King of 
England,' and a multitude of others, chiefly valuable as being the 
mine from which Shakspeare afterwards extracted his materials. 
These works were generally performed before the court, and 
must be considered as the first jude and imperfect essays of that 



CHAP, v.] EARLY ENGLISH THEATRES. 99 

grandest dramatic school which forms the chief literary glory of 
the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. 

It is singular to remark that, while the theatres of this period 
were of tlie rudest construction, and the appliances for producing 
the illusion of the scene were yet in a most imperfect state, the 
dramatic profession should have numbered in its ranks men who 
carried their art to a pitch of splendour which succeeding ages 
have neither equalled nor approached. It seems as though the 
very insufficiency of the material contrivances only tended to 
make these great men rely upon their own genius to produce im- 
pressions upon the imagination of their audience, more vivid and 
intense than the rude theatre of the time could hope to make upon 
their senses. The actors of this time, who were in many cases 
dramatic authors also, generally associated themselves into a sort 
of joint-stock company, and either travelled about the country, 
performing in the houses of the nobility, and for the amusement 
of the people on temporary stages in the yards of inns, or estab- 
lished themselves in some of the numerous theatres of London. 
These latter buildings, though erected expressly for the perform- 
ance of plays, retained many peculiarities traceable to the custom 
of acting in inns. They were uncovered, excepting over the 
stage; and the scenery, if it deserve the name, was of the rudest 
description, and consisted generally, till the time of Davenant at 
the Restoration, of nothing but a few curtains of tapestry or 
painted canvas, suspended so as to give the actors the power of 
making their exit and entrance, as if into a room, square, forest, 
street, &c. As the Elizabethan dramas are remarkable for the 
frequent supposed changes of scene which take place in them, 
the spot presented to the audience was indicated by the simplest 
expedient; a placard was fixed to one of the curtains, bearing 
the name of the city or country supposed, and this placard was 
changed for another at a change of scene : if, for example, the 
action was to be imagined in Padua, an inscription with the word 
"Padua" was suspended in view of the audience; should the 
scene be supposed to take place in a palace, a throne and canopy, 
called a " state," would be pushed forward ; if in a bed-cham- 
ber, a bed was introduced ; if in a tavern, the production of a 
table with bottles and glasses upon it — if in a court, a combination 
of the " state," with a table bearing pens and ink, were all that was 
necessary to give the hint or suggestion to the imaginative minds 
of an Elizabethan audience. We know, from innumerable pas- 
sages of tlie old dramatists, that it was customary for the "gallants," 
dandies, or raffines of the period, to sit during the performance 
on chairs placed on the stage in full view of the audience, smok- 
ing their pipes and exhibiting the splendour of their dress, and 
scrupling not to criticise aloud the drama which was going for- 



100 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [ciIAP. V. 

ward — a circumstance which must have still further injured the 
probability of the scene. At the back of the stage was erected a 
species of balcony or scaflolding of various platforms, on which 
appeared the persons who were supposed to speak from a win- 
dow, from the wall of a besieged city, and so forth ; and there 
were also permanent projections in various parts of the stage, 
behind which the actors might retire, in order unobserved to over- 
hear and see what was going on — a dramatic expedient so much 
used in the theatre of every country and period. 

It must not be forgotten, by any one who desires to form a 
correct idea of the Elizabethan stage, that the female parts were 
acted by boys, no woman having appeared as a performer in 
England until the Restoration, when the possibility that the other 
sex could represent fictitious characters seems first to have been 
demonstrated in Italy, from whence the example was rapidly fol- 
lowed in England and elsewhere. This circumstance is calculated 
to immeasurably increase our wonder and admiration at Shak- 
speare's genius, the profoundest, most delicate, and most inimitable 
of whose delineations are often his female characters, and who 
has never fallen into that coarseness of allusion and indulgence 
in double entendre which defiles the scenes of even the greatest 
of his illustrious contemporaries. Mean as was the scenery of 
the Elizabethan theatre, it would be an error to suppose that the 
dresses were in the same degree poor and unvaried. The actors 
appear to have exhibited great splendour of personal decoration, 
wearing, in plays of all ages and countries, the costume of their 
own time and nation — a costume, however, the anachronisms of 
which were not likely to have greaUy shocked the uncritical au- 
diences of the day. It is true that the universal employment, on 
the stage, of a contemporary costume has led many of the authors 
into the commission of trifling breaches of chronological or geo- 
graphical correctness, giving, in Massinger, ivatches to Spartan 
senators, and arming Romans with the Spanish rapier of the six- 
teenth century ; but, after all, the importance of such errors is in 
general much over-rated by the critics, and they make but little 
impression upon the truly imaginative and excitable spectator, 
who seldom stops to verify dates and judge the niceties of cos- 
tume. Be this as it may, the manly, graceful, and splendid cos- 
tume of the reign of Elizabeth appears to have been generally 
employed, as it still is retained (in our opinion with great pro- 
priety) in all those plays of imaginative character, the scene and 
age of whose supposed action are incapable of being strictly as- 
signed and particularised. 

The literary and even the personal career of most of the great 
dramatists of this period is in many respects so much the same, 
and also tends in so great a degree to throw light upon the true 



CHAP, v.] STATE OF THE DRAMATIC PROFESSION. 101 

character of their works, that we will make a few general re- 
marks on this subject before entering into any critical or biogra- 
pliical details : by so doing also we hope to give a clearer notion 
of tiie condition of our national stage at this vigorous and bril- 
liant period of its existence. The immortal men who have illus- 
trated this portion of our literature were, in a great majority of 
cases, persons of academical education — in some instances, as in 
those of Ben Jonson and Chapman, they were distinguished for 
their learning, even in a learned age. In a multitude of instances, 
too, they were young men of violent passions and desperate for- 
tune, who rushed up to the capital from their academic retirement 
of Oxford or Cambridge, and thought to tind in the theatre the 
source of a turbid and rapid glory, and perhaps the means for in- 
dulging, with little exertion to themselves, in the riotous pleasures 
of the town, elevated the while by the spirit of freedom and in- 
tellect which prevailed in the theatrical circle, 'i'hey almost all 
of them began their career as actors, and it is to this circumstance 
that we must attribute some of the peculiar excellences of their 
way of writing. It made them consummate masters of what is 
called "stage-elTect," the art of placing their characters in the 
most striking and picturesque situations, though at the same time 
it tended to increase that taste for violent exaggeration and incon- 
sistent passion which forms one of their evident defects. They 
were not calm, contemplative scholars, building up, in the silence 
of their study, structures of elaborate and artificial character ; but 
men — active, suffering, enjoying men; who had mingled in the 
serious business of lite, and painted its smiles and its tears, its 
grandeur and its litdeness, from incessant and personal observation. 
They wrote, too, for an audience eager for novelty, thirsting and 
hungering for strong, true passion — an audience composed, not of 
the court, but of the body of the people. On reading the dramas 
of this period we cannot understand how human sensibilities 
could bear the shock of such terrible pathos as we find in these 
wonderful works — agony piled upon agony till it becomes almost 
too powerful when read; what then must it have been when 
represented with all the graces of delivery ! The truth is, that 
"there were giants in those days," and the spectators cared not 
how painfully their sympathies were awakened, provided they 
were moved strongly, naturally, and directly. 

The language, too, in which these terrible or playful scenes 
were written, was a medium admirably suited to the purpose and 
to the time : it was in the highest degree rich, varied, tender, and 
majestic; adorned with all the graces of classical imagery, but 
without a trace of pedantry or formality. The great object of . 
these writers was Passion; as Dignity had been the principal 
aim of the Greek dramatists. They therefore directed all their 

9* 



102 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. VI. 

efforts to the faithful delineation of Nature, and made their scene 
a true mirror of Life itself, mingling the grave and the merry, the 
serious and the comic, in the same play, the same scene, and 
even in the same speech. And thus they have produced a con- 
stellation of immortal works, which, like the creations of the 
greatest among them all, " were not for an age, but for all time;" 
and which, notwithstanding the great and grievous faults with 
which their excellences are contrasted, will be read with still in- 
creasing ardour and admiration through age after age, because in 
them Art has been but the interpreter and handmaid of Nature ! 



CHAPTER VI. 



MARLOW AND SHAKSPEARE. 



Marlow: his Career and Works — His Faustus — His Death — Contempol-ary Judg- 
ments on his Genius. Shakspeare: His Birth, Education, and iSarly Life — 
Traditions respecting him — His Marriage — Early Studies — Goes to London — 
His Career — Death and Monument — Order of his Works — Roman Plays— His 
Diction — Characters. 

The remark which we made in the preceding chapter respect- 
ing the general character and career of the great dramatists of the 
EHzabethan era will be found to apply so universally as to render 
it unnecessary for us to give biographical details of individuals 
whose life was, for the most part, a constant alternation of squalid 
poverty and of temporary success. 

The profession of playwright at the period we are considering 
was held in but low esteem; in fact, was not raised in any per- 
ceptible degree above the occupation of the actor. It will be 
found, indeed, that most of the great authors we are speaking of 
were themselves actors, as well as writers for the stage ; and this 
circumstance undoubtedly tended to give to their productions 
some of those peculiarities which so strongly distinguish this 
school of dramatists from any other which ever existed in the 
world. The peculiarities so communicated were, as might natu- 
rally be expected, both good and evil. Writing for an audience 
of the most miscellaneous character, and addressing themselves at 
the same time to the learned and the ignorant, to the refined and 
to the illiterate, they were obliged to seek for matter adapted to 
every taste ; now gratifying the most elegant tastes of the courtly 
and scholarlike noble, and then, in the same play — often in the 
same scene — tickling the coarser fancy of the rude and jovial 



CHAP. VI.] MARLOW: HIS CAREER AND WORKS. 103 

arlisan. It is in some measure, therefore, to the popularity of the 
drama as a favourite amusement, at this period, of all ranks, that 
we owe much of what is most grand, most airy, and most romantic, 
in the Elizabethan theatre, and also, it cannot be denied, a good 
deal of the irregularity that characterises these wonderful compo- 
sitions — their strange mixture of elevated passion and mean buf- 
foonery ; much of their sublimity, and much also of their mean- 
ness. 

It should be carefully borne in mind that the above remarks 
apply universally (though of course not in the same degree or 
proportion) to all the dramatists of the Shaksperian or Elizabethan 
school, some being more distinguished for pathos, some for sub- 
limity, others for sweetness of fancy and a "Sicilian fruitfulness" 
of beautiful diction and harmony. Passing, therefore, over John 
Lyly, the affected euphuist and fantastical innovator on the lan- 
guage of the court, but whose dramas are distinguished by an 
exquisite grace and Grecian purity of construction, and whose 
songs in particular are models of airiness and music, we come to 
Peele, Nash, Greene, and Lodge, the immediate predecessors of 
Marlow, who was himself, so to speak, the Ibrerunner and herald 
of Shakspeare. 

The luxuriant fancy of his 'David and Bethsabe,' and the 
kingly amplification of his ' Edward I.,' would have given Peele's 
name no mean place on the national Parnassus ; the " gall and 
salt" of Nash's vigorous satire would have preserved his memory 
in the admiration of his country ; Greene's "happy talent, clear 
spirit, and lively imagination" would have saved him from that 
oblivion whence his works are seldom recalled but by the painful 
commentator on Shakspeare ; and the romantic spirit and wood- 
land freshness of Lodge's graceful muse might have earned him 
a lasting niche in " Fame's proud temple." But all these bright 
intellects were quenched and swallowed up in the immeasurable 
splendour of their great successor. At noon we know, as well 
as at midnight, the stars are in the sky, but we can only see them 
in the absence of the sun. 

The dates of the birth and death of the above dramatists are as 
follows: — Lyly, born 1554, died some time after 1600; George 
Peele, a fellow-actor and shareholder with Shakspeare in the 
Blackfriars Theatre, died before 1599; Nash, born in Suffolk, 
1564, and died, "after a life spent," as he pathetically says him- 
self, "in fantastical satirism, in whose veins heretofore I misspent 
my spirit, and prodigally conspired against good hours," also 
about 1600; Greene died in 1592; and Lodge, who at the end 
of his life is supposed to have renounced the stage, and become 
a physician of eminence, is reported to have died in London of 
the plague in 1625. 



104 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. £cHAP. VI. 

While these authors had been gradually but imperceptibly im- 
proving and developing the infant drama of England, we now 
come to the great writer who performed for our stage nearly the 
same offices as were rendered to that of Greece, according to the 
well known dictum of Horace, by iEschylus : — 

*' Et docuit magnumque loqui, nitique cothurno." 

This was Christopher Marlow. Born at Canterbury, about the 
year 1562, he received a learned education at Bene't College, 
Cambridge, and is supposed to have been attracted by the repu- 
tation he had obtained by his first dramatic essay, the tragedy of 
' Tamburlaine,' to embrace the profession of actor. The play to 
which we have just alluded was calculated, from the wild oriental 
nature of its subject, to give a too free current to Marlow's natu- 
ral tendency to bombastic fury of declamation, and gigantic mon- 
strosity and exaggeration of sentiment. Jonson has left on record 
his admiration for " Marlow's mighty line," as he so nobly ex- 
presses the peculiar character of this dramatist's wild and swell- 
ing spirit; and the iEschylus of the English stage, like his great 
Athenian prototype, seems to have impressed his contemporaries 
with a most exalted respect for his sublime and irregular genius. 
Indeed it may easily be conceived that, as grandeur and force are 
the qualities most likely to strike the imagination of the public at 
a period when art is in its infancy, so the too often accompany- 
ing faults of tumidity and exaggeration are generally oerceptible 
at such a period. The biting raillery of x\ristophanes has shown 
no mercy to the extravagance, obscurity, and bombast of iEschy- 
lus ; and we cannot, therefore, be surprised to find the deeper and 
more delicate raillery of Shakspeare fixing upon the absurdities of 
Marlow's gigantic dramas. Tlie two greatest works of this pow- 
erful writer are undoubtedly the ' Faustus' and the ' Jew of Malta,' 
the latter of which was produced before 1593. We trust we 
shall be excused for attempting to give some account of the first 
of these extraordinary works, when we mention the obligations 
incurred by Goethe to the ' Faustus' of Marlow, obligations 
which the patriarch of Weimar never failed to acknowledge. As 
in the ' Faust ' of Goethe, Marlow's hero is a learned man of 
Wittenberg, who, finding the vanity of those studies which have 
made him the glory and envy of . all Germany, makes a compact 
with the Evil One that he may enjoy, in exchange for his eternal 
salvation, a certain period of youth, beauty, and sensual indulg- 
ence. It must be confessed that, in the grandeur and vastness 
of the satire on human follies, in the tenderness of the pathetic 
scenes, in the admirable conception of the character of Margaret 
— that daisy, dew-besprent with tears, and blooming so sweetly at 
the mouth of an infernal abyss of sin and misery which yawns to 



CHAP. VI.] MARLOW: HIS DEATH. 105 

engulf it — and, above all, in the complete creation of that won- 
drous Mephislophiles, the German bard has shown a power not 
approached by the old English bard. In the pictures, however, 
of terror, despair, and unavailing remorse, and particularly in the 
terrific scene when Faustus is expecting the approach of the de- 
mon to claim performance of the dread contract, — in these, and in 
a rich glow of classic imagery, and in the appropriate colouring 
of gloom and horror thrown over the whole action, we must be 
pardoned if we think our countryman superior. The 'Jew of 
Malta' is the portraiture of revenge and hatred embodied in the 
common type of the Jewish character as it appeared to the popu- 
lar imagination of the sixteenth century ; that is, under a form at 
once terrific, odious, and contemptible. Not among the least as- 
tonishing proofs of Shakspeare's divine and prescient mind is the 
fact that, living at a period when the Jews were still persecuted, 
and when popular prejudice — that indestructible monster — still 
believed the calumnies of the Middle Ages, and fancied that the 
Jews sacrificed a Christian child at the Passover, and prac- 
tised the forbidden arts of magic and necromancy, Shakspeare 
should have been victorious over the prejudices which still en- 
chained the mind even of the learned Marlow, and should have 
given us, in Shylock, the portrait, the living image, of " an Israel- 
ite indeed," — not the absurd bugbear of the Elizabethan stage, 
with his red nose, his impossible riches, and equally impossible 
crimes, but a real breathing man, desperately cruel and revengeful 
it is true, but cruel and revengeful on what seem to him good 
grounds, and only so far a Jew as not the less to remain a human 
being like ourselves. Nothing can surpass the absurdity of Mar- 
low's plot in this play — an absurdity hardly compensated by oc- 
casional passages of majestic though somewhat tumid declama- 
tion. Few things, for instance, can be finer than the dying speech 
of Barabas, the Jew — 

"Die life, fly soul, tongue curse thy fill, and die !" — 

or his comparison of himself to the ominous and obscene bird — 

" The sad-presaging raven, that tolls 
The sick man^s passport from her hollow beak, 
And in the shadow of the silent night 
Doth shake contagion from her sable wings." 

Marlow's life was as wild and irregular as his genius, and his 
death at once tragic and deplorable. It is related ihat in an un- 
worthy brawl, in a place and with a person (according to some 
accounts a servingman) as disreputable as the occasion, he en- 
deavoured to use his dagger on the person of his antagonist, who, 
seizing Marlow's wrist, gave a different direction to the poniard; 
the weapon entered Marlow's own head, "in such sort," to use 



106 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. VI. 

the words of Anthony Wood," that, notwithstanding all the means 
of surirery that could be brought, he shortly after died of his 
wound." 

He was buried at Deptford on the 1st of June, 1593; and many 
dramas have come down to us bearing the impress of his genius, 
and several, indeed, ascribed to his name: but such was the pre- 
valence of his style when he wrote, and so universal at this period 
was the custom for several dramatists to work together or suc- 
cessively at the same piece, that it is very difllcult to afliliate with 
certainty the dramas of the Elizabethan age, except those of 
Shakspcare. 

The finest, perhaps, of these works is the ' Edward II.,' which 
contains many passages of the deepest pathos. As a proof of the 
high reputation enjoyed by Mario w among his contemporaries, 
we will quote the spirited lines of Drayton : — 

*' Next ^larlow, bathed in the Thespian springs, 
Had in him those brave translunarij things 
That the first poets had ; liis verses were 
All air and fire, wliich made his verses clear : 
For that./i/ie madness he did still retain 
Which rightly should possess a poet's brain." 

In taking our leave of this great and brilliant genius, we cannot 
but regret that his untimely death deprived his works of the regu- 
larity which time and experience would probably have given to 
them ; but whether we speak of him as a man or a? an author, 
we may very well apply to him the lines pronounced in his own 
tragedy by the scholar over the mangled limbs of Faustus : — 

"Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight; 
And burned is Apollo's laurel bough, 
That sometimes grew within this learned man." 

There is a great deal of melancholy truth in that profound verse 
of the modern poet, 

" The world knows nothing of its greatest men :" 

and this verity will especially apply to that class of which we 
would desire the most minute details — the Poets. Of Homer we 
know so little that his very existence and personality have been 
brought in question; respecting Virgil we possess only a few 
vague and cold notices ; of the private life, and, above all, the in- 
tellectual life, of Milton we possess no information but what we 
can glean from his writings ; and of a greater yet than these — 
Shakspeare — all the details which we possess may be condensed 
into a few lines, and are principally derived from the most frigid 
and unattractive of all sources, legal documents, the poet's will 
holding among these the most forward place. 

William Shakspeare or Shakespeare was born, as everybody 
knows, in the little town of Stratford, on the Avon, in Warwick- 



CHAP. VI,] shakspeare: his early life. 107 

sliire, in the month of April, 1.564. He was baptized on the 26lh, 
which has originated the poetical, and certainly not very impro- 
bable tradition, that the greatest of Englishmen was born on the 
23d of April, the anniversary of St, George, the tutelary saint of 
his country. His father was a dealer in wool (not a butclier, as 
was long ignorantly supposed), and had at one time been in flourish- 
ing circumstances, for he had occupied tiie office of high-bailiff", 
or chief municipal dignitary, in his native town, but he appears, 
notwithstanding his having married an lieiress possessed ol some 
little fortune, to have gradually sunk into great distress, and ulti- 
mately to have received charity from the corporatictn of which he 
had once been a prominent member. " Genius," as Washington 
Irving prettily says, "delights to nestle its ofl^spring in strange 
places;" and it is a proud distinction of England that its litera- 
ture should number among its brightest names so large a propor- 
tion of men born in the humblest ranks of society. It is beneath 
low roofs, and few are humbler than that venerable one at Strat- 
ford, that the cradles of our greatest men were rocked; it is by 
poor firesides that their genius budded and expanded ; and this is 
the reason why our literature, more than that of any other country, 
echoes the universal sentiments of the human heart, and speaks a 
language intelligible to every country and every age. 

Of Shakspeare's childhood and education nothing is accurately 
known; perhaps the poverty of his father, by preventing hirn 
giving his son more than very limited and rustic instruction, 
enabled the boy's intellect to develop itself naturally and gradu- 
ally, unstiffened and uncrippled by the too early discipline of 
tlie schoolmaster — that discipline which, like the swathings and 
swaddling-bands of the injudicious nurse, so often cripples and 
deforms what it is intended to render strong and beautiful. His 
early years were probably passed amid the smiling scenery sur- 
rounding Stratford, marking, with prophetic eye, every tint of 
cloud and stream, every feature of external beauty, and laying up 
a store of observations on the passions, the sentiments, and the 
oddities of human character, — 



" While he was yet a boy. 



Careless of books, yet having felt the power 

Of Nature, by the gentle agency 

Of natural objects then led on to feel 

For passions that were not his own, and think 

(At random and imperfectly indeed) 

On man, the heart of man, and human life." 

There can be little doubt of Shakspeare having at some early 
period of his life been employed as clerk to some country attor- 
ney; for he shows in all his works a technical acquaintance with 
the phraseology of the English law — an acquaintance, indeed, 
which could only have been acquired by actual praclice : this 



108 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. VI. 

circumstance is also further proved by some of the few passages 
in the writings of his contemporaries in which mention is made 
of the great dramatist. His life at Stratford, according to the 
vague and imperfect traditions subsisting after his death in his na- 
tive place, was idle, and perhaps even riotous : careful investiga- 
tion has shown the impossibility of the events assigned by the 
well-known anecdote of the deer-stealing in Sir Thomas Lucy's 
park at Charlecote, as the immediate cause of his quitting Strat- 
ford and first adventuring in the career of London life. However 
reluctanl we may be, in our eagerness to know the details of 
such a life, we must resign this picturesque story of the youthful 
Sliakspeare's woodland misdemeanour, and seek for some other 
cause of his leaving Warwickshire. This is to be found in the 
register of the poet's marriage with Anne Hathaway, the daughter 
of a small farmer residing at Shottery, a village about a mile from 
Stratford. On the 28th of November, 1582, Shakspeare obtained 
at Worcester a license of marriage, permitting the ceremony to 
take place 7vith once asking the banns, a circumstance which 
shows that this important act of life was accompanied with great 
hurry and precipitation, the more obviously so as Shakspeare was 
at this time a minor, and consequently unable to enter legally into 
any contract for himself. In this document, therefore, we find 
the names of two persons as sureties for the bridegroom, who 
was, it must be observed, seven years younger than his wife. 
All this precipitation, however, is explained by the register of 
baptisms in the church at Stratford, by which it appears that the 
poet's daughter Susanna was christened on the 26th of May, 
1583, or only six months after the marriage. In a year and a 
half two other children, twins, were born to the poet, who had 
no offspring afterwards. Finding himself thus, at the early age 
of nineteen, a husband and a father, and probably perceiving that 
the obscurity of a retired village was no sphere for his intellectual 
powers, our poet about this time betook himself to London, there 
to commence his brief career of glory. Educated so imperfectly 
as he must have been, it is only to solitary and intense, though 
perhaps desultory study, that he could have owed that extensive 
acquaintance with books which he undoubtedly possessed ; and it 
is therefore fair to conclude that he had been a diligent reader 
before he left his native place. In the employment of classical 
images, for example, Shakspeare shows no inferiority to any of 
that great number of dramatists at this period who were men of 
academical education ; many of them indeed men of distinguished 
learning. His writings abound in passages indicating a very ex- 
tensive and accurate acquaintance with classical imagery, and at 
the same time his splendid imagination has imparted to such 
allusions a vivacity, a brilliancy, and a glory not to be found in 



CHAP. VI.] SHAKSPEARE : HIS SCHOLARSHIP. 109 

any other author. Much controversy has been raised with 
respect to Shakspeare's scholarship, and minute and ingenious 
investigation has been employed not only to determine how far 
he was acquainted with the literature of Greece and Rome, with 
the Italian, Spanish, and French languages, but even to ascertain 
what books he had read ; and while some have considered his 
acquirements as unusually great, others have thought to exalt his 
glory by denying him even a moderate share of learning. The 
truth is, however, probably between these two extremes; and 
when we reflect that many of the great authors of antiquity, with 
whose thoughts he was evidently familiar, were translated, when 
he wrote, into English, we may be justified in considering him 
to have had a tolerable acquaintance with Latin and French, two 
languages which enter largely (though in a comparatively impure 
state) into the legal phraseology of England. 

Plutarch, for example, had been translated into English, and 
Chapman's grand version of Homer had doubtless rolled its ma- 
jestic harmonies over the ear of Shakspeare ; this was enough 
for such a mind, whose assimilative power was so immense. With 
such intellects the slightest hint is sufficient : from the mere ruins 
and imperfect fragments of the Beautiful, they can build up a 
perfect and complete edifice, even as the eye of Cuvier, from a 
tooth, from a fragment of bone of some antediluvian reptile, could 
reconstruct the whole system of animal life which had passed 
away for ever. Of all the attempts in modern literature to re- 
produce the manners and sentiments of the classical periods, 
Shakspeare's are by far the most successful ; we need only refer 
to the characters of Coriolanus, of Cleopatra, of Caesar, of Ulysses ; 
while in the employment of classical imagery no poet has ever 
exhibited such mastery and grace. 

Shakspeare's first introduction to London life and to the theatri- 
cal profession has been as much misrepresented by tradition as 
the cause of his leaving his native town. The legend goes, that 
the poet, on his first arrival in the metropolis, was reduced to 
such distress as to hold horses at the door of the theatres, and 
that he thus ultimately obtained his introduction "behind the 
scenes." This, however, like the story of the deer-stealing, is a 
tale totally without foundation. We have seen in a former chapter 
that the companies of actors were occasionally in the habit of 
going about the country, and performing at the houses of the 
nobility : it was very possible for Shakspeare to have gratified 
that youthful desire which so many of us have felt for a peep 
into the enchanted world of the stage long before he even thought 
of going to seek his fortune in London. This is the more pro- 
bable, as Thomas Green, an actor of note at the time, was a 
native of Stratford, and, some have supposed, a kinsman of the 
10 



110 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. VI. 

poet; and Richard Burbage, the greatest tragedian of the day, 
and perhaps one of the greatest actors whom England ever pro- 
duced, was a Warwickshire man. We know also that the actors 
M'ere frequently in the habit of visiting Stratford, and the proba- 
bility is, that it was by Green's invitation that Shakspeare first 
joined a troop of players. That he was possessed of poetical 
genius could not have been unknown even at this time, as it is 
dilhcult to believe that his first works — the ' Venus and Adonis,' 
and the ' Lucrece' — were not composed during his residence at 
Stratford. These two works, though disfigured by that Italian 
taste which was prevalent at the time, and though containing pas- 
sages of a somewhat too warm complexion for the stricter taste of 
the present day, are full of the softest harmony and the most luxu- 
riant imagery : the youthful fancy of the poet seems to run riot in 
the richest profusion : these works bear all the marks, and exhibit 
all tlie defects, of youth — but it is of the youth of a Shakspeare! 

Our poet, then, became a member (and of course a shareholder 
also) of the Blackfriars theatre, and seems to have steadily and 
rapidly risen in reputation among his comrades, for in November, 
1589, Shakspeare's name is inserted eleventh in a list of fifteen 
])roprietors; in 1596 his name is fifth in a list of eight share- 
holders; and in 1603 it was second in the new patent granted by 
James I. As he increased in fame and importance at his theatre, 
he gradually became proprietor of the wardrobe and stage-proper- 
ties, which, together with the shares he previously possessed, 
were valued at 1400/,, a sum equivalent to nearly 7000/. of our 
present money. He was also a large proprietor in the Globe 
theatre, and his annual income is calculated at at least 1500/. As 
an actor he is said not to have exceeded mediocrity, though this 
is hardly in accordance with the tradition of two or three of the 
parts which he is said to have performed, and which would by no 
means be intrusted to an indifl^erent actor. These are Hieronymo, 
in the 'Spanish Tragedy,' to which we have alluded in another 
place; the Ghost in his own 'Hamlet;' and Adam in 'As You 
Like It,' — characters, we repeat, whicii would now never be 
placed in the hands of inferior talent. Besides this, it is impos- 
sible to read the admirable directions to the players in the second 
scene of the third act of ' Hamlet' williout being convinced that 
no man ever possessed so delicate and profound an appreciation 
lor the true excellences of the histrionic art, or could so well 
communicate its precepts. From the list of characters just enu- 
merated, it will be seen that Shakspeare's line, as it is called, was 
the old men of the mimic world, or what is denominated on the 
French stage the peres nobles. 

It was in the interval between his coming up to London and 
the year 1611 that he produced the thirty-seven plays which form 



CHAP. VI.] SIIAKSPEARE: HIS CAREER. Ill 

the first folio edition; and lie appears to have always retained 
the intention of retiring, as soon as he had acquired a competency, 
to his native place. As he grew rii^er he purchased land in 
Stratford, and became the proprietor of New Place, the principal 
house in the town, in the garden of which there long was to be 
seen a mulberry-tree, said to have been planted by his own illustri- 
ous hand. Will our readers believe that this tree was actually 
cut down by order of a clergyman of Stratford, under the pretext 
of its attracting so many curious pilgrims to the spot, which had 
fallen into the possession of this clerical Vandal! Shakspeare 
continued during his whole residence in London to pay annual 
visits to Stratford, and about 1612 he retired altogether to New- 
Place, to pass the evening of his glorious life in that calm and 
dignified retirement which he had so nobly earned. There is 
something touching in this desire of our great poet; something- 
well in accordance with his divine genius in this tender recol- 
lection of his birthplace, this returning in honoured manhood 
to those well-remembered scenes of infancy which had greenly 
dwelt in his remembrance, and over which he was to cast, till 
time shall be no more, the magic of his name. In this retire- 
ment, so beautiful by nature, and so hallowed by the most tender 
recollections in the society of his childhood's friends, and among 
the quiet home-scenes of pastoral England, the poet passed four 
years of what must appear to us felicity as unmingled as ever fell 
to the lot of man ; and on the 23d of April, 1616, he died, having 
just completed his 52d year. Who ever, in so short a life, did so 
much for immortality ? His widow survived him seven years : his 
two daughters were married, and one of them had three sons, but 
these latter all died without issue, and consequently, as the poet's 
only son, Hamnet, died young, there now exists no lineal de- 
scendant of the poet. Shakspeare was buried in the parish- 
church of Stratford, and over the place of his interment there has 
been erected a mural monument in the Italian taste of the day, 
being a half-length of the poet, seated, with a pen in his hand, 
and bearing a laudatory inscription in Latin verse. This bust is 
undoubtedly a portrait, and was originally painted to imitate life, 
so that it gave an idea of the complexion, colour of the eyes, hair, 
&c., of the original. Malone, more barbarous than a church- 
warden, however, covered this most interesting work with a thick 
coat of white paint, from which it has not been and cannot be 
rescued. Shakspeare appears in this portrait to have been sin- 
gularly handsome: the oudihe of the face is regular and oval; 
the extraordinary height, breadth, and peculiar airy lightness of 
the forehead in particular make it one of those heads whicli, 
once seen, never can be forgotten. This is perhaps the most re- 
markable peculiarity of the head, and this is perceivable in all the 



112 OUTLINES or GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. VI. 

portraits. The forehead is really vast, and yet singularly light — 
a worthy temple for such lovely and majestic oracles. The hair, 
which is divided on the tof) of the head, is, like his beard, of an 
auburn or golden sunny brown; his complexion is healthy, and 
the expression of the whole face is in perfect accordance with 
Avhat we learn of his generous, gende character. 

There is very little doubt but that Shakspeare's literary career 
as a dramatic author was in no respects different from what we 
have described as almost universal at the period. He began by 
the re-arrangement of old plays, and it was probably while en- 
gaged in this mean and almost mechanical employment that he 
felt the first electric flash of that admirable genius which was 
afterwards to burn with such a steady splendour in his great dra- 
mas. Many of the works which came into the world with the 
passport of his name, nay, some which have found a place in the 
editions of his collected works, were, in reality, only rechauffes 
made by him, or older works to which his pen had only added 
some scene, character, or speech. Of the former of these two 
kinds we may instance the ' Yorkshire Tragedy,' and ' Arden of 
Feversham ;' and of the latter, ' Pericles,' and ' Titus Andronicus.' 
A reference to any edition of Shakspeare will inform the reader 
that the two former plays are not included in the poet's works, 
and that the two latter are. We find then in this matter that the edit- 
ors have acted with partiality; for whatever claims 'Pericles' and 
' Titus' possess to the honour of being called Shakspeare's might 
be safely maintained by the two other dramas. Consequently, either 
'Pericles' and 'Titus' ought to be excluded from the list of our 
poet's productions, or the 'Yorkshire Tragedy,' 'Arden of Fe- 
versham,' and several others, ought to be admitted. The chro- 
nology of the plays has been investigated by the commentators 
with a painful and laudable minuteness; but we perhaps hardly 
possess suflicient data to enable us to demonstrate with any de- 
gree of certainty the order of their production. This is much to 
be regretted, as our ignorance deprives us of the pleasure and im- 
provement to be obtained from tracing the gradual development 
of Shakspeare's genius and art. It seems to us probable that 
' Othello' and the ' Tempest' were among the last of these won- 
derful productions, and the ' Two Gentlemen of Verona,' the 
'Comedy of Errors,' and 'Love's Labour's Lost,' were among 
the first. It should be remarked, however, that our opinion is 
founded chiefly on internal evidence of style and treatment, a cri- 
terion not always to be depended on. 

The sources from whence Shakspeare drew the materials for 
his works were in every respect the same as those to which we 
have already alluded. It would be highly interesting to read the 
old plays of which he made so copious a use, and to remark what 



CHAP. V1.3 shakspeare: his works. 113 

were the rude hints of character, what the coarse draughts and 
outlines of passion, which he has transformed into such imper- 
sonations as Lady Macbeth, as Jaquea, as Ariel. The most es- 
sential peculiarity of his genius appears that intuitive and instan- 
taneous certainty with which he threw himself, so to say, into a 
character, and perceived all the limits of its personality. Tlie 
personations of all other dramatists appear like bas-reliefs, or pic- 
lures, presenting but one surface to the eye of the intellectual 
spectator ; those of Shakspeare resemble statues, which may be 
viewed from all points equally well, without losing any of their 
likeness to reality. But why should we limit our words? are they 
not rather living, moving beings, with flesh and blood and pas- 
sions like our own ? In reading the dramatic works of all other 
men* you may admire the truth with which the character is con- 
ceived, and the skill with which it is set in motion, but you feel 
that it is created for a particular purpose, and set before you in a 
particular light. In Shakspeare you seem, on the contrary, to 
perceive depth beyond depth of personal identity or individuality, 
stretching far beyond human ken, and losing itself in the un- 
fathomed abysses of the heart of man. It is as when you fix 
your eyes upon the vastnesses of the summer sky, or upon the 
deeper purple of a tropic ocean, — your gaze seems to die away in 
tlie immeasurable profound. It will not seem too much to say of 
Shakspeare's characters, that there is not one, among the thousand 
figures which people his living scenes, to which you might not 
assign (from the elements given by the poet in any number of 
speeches, small or great, put into its mouth) a whole train of an- 
tecedent events, and possible development of character. And this 
is one of the most marked and admirable peculiarities of our poet. 
In the works of other dramatists, the personages, conceived with 
what vividness you will, seem, so to say, ready made, and set in 
motion for the nonce ; while Shakspeare's seem to be acted upon 
during the course of the events, and to be modified and changed 
just as real men and women perpetually are in their intercourse 
with the world and with each other. Where this wonderful cre- 
ator gained the knowledge of human nature, and experience of 
human motives, which have presented him to posterity rather as 
something divine than as a mere mortal artist, it is impossible to 
learn. 

The naturalist knows that the details of creation are inexhaust- 
ible; and Linnaeus, when he told his scholars that there were 
more wonders and mysteries in the turf covered by his foot than 
the longest life of the most laborious botanist would suffice to de- 
scribe or to explain, but expressed the difficulty encountered by 
the critic who attempts to examine the vast and inexhaustible do- 
minions of Shakspeare's creation. The three great subdivisions, 

10* 



114 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. CcHAP. VI. 

then, may be stated as follows : — 1, Plays founded on subjects of 
classical antiquity ; 2, Plays founded on the history, either legend- 
ary or authentic, of modern countries ; and 3, Dramas on roman- 
tic stories, such as the innumerable novels of Spain and Italy. Of 
the plays which take for their materials antique personages and 
manners, the most remarkable are 'Julius Caesar,' 'Antony and 
Cleopatra,' 'Timon of Athens,' ' Coriolanus,' and ' Troilus and 
Cressida.' In these works the spirit and tone of thought of the 
antique world are most admirably seized, and delicate and subtle 
distinctions are made between the manners of diflerent epochs of 
Roman history. For instance, the language, turn of thought, and 
local colouring are exquisitely and profoundly Roman, both in 
'Coriolanus,' 'Antony,' and 'Julius Cassar ;' yet the reader is 
conscious that the Romans in ' Coriolanus' are as different from 
the Romans of the other two plays as was the Roman people at 
the two different epochs in question. In ' Coriolanus' every line 
breathes the simple, fervid patriotism of the republic, its rude 
manners, its severe virtues ; while in the other plays we feel that 
the Roman republic has ceased to exist, and the monarchic, civil- 
ized, corrupt tone of manners has already come into existence. 

'Timon of Athens' has been finely called " the Lear of private 
life;" and certainly never was there composed a grander or more 
impressive picture of profuse indiscriminate friendship punished 
by its natural offspring, ingratitude. The over-loving and over- 
confiding spirit of Timon, soft, effeminate, thirsting for universal 
attachment, degenerates into the bitterest misanthropy — like the 
luscious wine, which, soured, becomes the sharpest vinegar; and 
Avhat poet but Shakspeare could have ventured to give, in one 
drama, two characters of misanthropy, like Timon and Apeman- 
tus, so alike externally, yet so strongly contrasting : the one a 
man-hater from nature, the other made so by circumstances ? If 
the misanthropy of Timon be (as we have just ventured to imagine 
it) the sweet and potent wine turned sour in the sunshine of a too 
luxuriant prosperity, that of the Cynic is rather the poor and acid 
fruit of a cold and barren and unloving nature, which no prosperity 
could render rich or generous. 

We need not speak here of the wonderful life, fervour, and ani- 
mation which pervade all these plays, and the lifelike reality with 
■which the poet places us amid the stirring scene. Here is no idle 
declamation, no parade of classical propriety; and yet how ad- 
mirably are the great characters delineated and relieved against the 
moving background of inferior interests and passions ! How ex- 
quisite are those little glimpses into private life, afforded us, as if 
by accident, yet with such consummate skill, amid the tumult and 
fermentation of great events — the domestic scenes in ' Coriolanus,' 
the revelries, the quarrelling, and reconciliations of Cleopatra! 



CHAP. VI. 3 SHAKSPEARE : HIS DICTION. 115 

The play of ' Troilus and Cressida,' though disfigured in parts by- 
some singular anachronisms, is invaluable for the truly Homeric 
delineation of Ulysses and Agamemnon. Can anything in the 
way of pure rhetoric be finer, more skilful, than the speech of 
Antony over the body of Caesar, or than the harangue of Ulysses 
in the 'Troilus?' We have here the very essence and soul of 
classicism, and we have, too, what the ancients have not given us 
— the household and private physiognomy of their times. Shaks- 
peare and Homer are absolutely the only men who have ever suc- 
ceeded in representing what is heroic without once losing sight 
of what is truly natural and moving. As to the language of these 
and all his plays, it would be useless to speak of its beauty here; 
we could but repeat, and perhaps weaken in repeating, the enthu- 
siastic admiration of all who have been able to judge of this kind 
of merit: of all authors Shakspeare is the most natural and un- 
forced in his style, and yet there is none whose words are either 
so musical in their arrangement, so striking and picturesque in 
themselves, or contain so many thoughts. Sometimes, indeed, 
we meet with paragraphs in which every important word is not 
only admirable, as conveying, strengthening, or adorning the 
meaning, but is itself an image new, bold, true, and vigorous in 
the highest degree. We open our Shakspeare at hazard ; for 
instance, the following — 

" Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on 
The dashing rocks thy sea-sick, weary bark^' — 

where the bark, by the " fine madness" of the poet, is made 
" weary" and " sea-sick." Again ; where JEneas says to the 
trumpeter, 

" Trumpeter, blow loud, 
Send thy brass voice through aU these lazy tents'' — 

where the epithet "brass" is transferred from the instrument to 
its sound, and the "tents" said to be "lazy," instead of their in- 
habitants; or the " vagabond flag," that 

"Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide ;" 
and a thousand others in this — and in all the plays : 

•" the quick comedians 



Extempore shall stage us ; Antony 

Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see 

Some squeaking Cleopatra 601/ my greatness." 

But why multiply examples? Every page of Shakspeare would 
furnish us with many instances of such intensifying of expres- 
sion, where some happy word conveys to us a whole train of 
ideas, condensed into a single luminous point as it were — words 
so new, so full of meaning, and yet so unforced and natural, that 



116 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. CcHAP. VI. 

the rudest mind perceives almost intuitively their meaning, and 
yet which no study could improve or imitate. It is this which 
constitutes the most striking peculiarity of the Shaksperian lan- 
guage ; it is this point in which his treatment, his manner, differs 
from that of all other authors, ancient or modern, English or 
foreign, who ever wrote ; it is this which, while it justities the 
almost idolatrous veneration of his countrymen, makes him of 
all authors the most untranslatable. 

All have observed the simplicity and homeliness which dis- 
tinguish the images of this great poet, and particularly in pas- 
sages of intense passion ; and the time has arrived when critics of 
all countries unite in appreciating the true grandeur and nature of 
such images, which are precisely those most likely to suggest 
themselves in moments of the greatest agitation. The time, we 
say, is past when a false and artificial system of so-called /)ro/;ne/i/ 
can find fault with Lady Macbeth's terrific image — 

" ?sor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark. 
To cry, Hold, hold .'" 

or that admirable picture of tranquillity and silence, presenting 
itself, it should be remembered, to the imagination of a tired 
soldier : " not a mouse stirring." 

What a terrible train of guilty thoughts, of horror and unavail- 
ing remorse, in that short dialogue between Macbeth and his 
wife, beginning with the words — 

" Macb. I have done the deed : — Didst thou not hear a noise ? 

Lady Macb. I heard the owl scream, and the crickets cry. 
Did not you speak ? 

Macb. When ? 

Lady Macb. Now. 

Macb. As I descended ? 

Lidy Macb. Av. 

Macb. Hark!— 
Who lies i' the second chamber?" 

But we dare not trust ourselves to quote. In Shakspeare the 
various excellences of the art are so wonderfully mingled, that it 
it is seldom easy to quote one passage as a specimen of mere 
beautiful imagery, another of grand declamation, another of wit, 
another of humour, and so on. Admirable as the passages are in 
themselves, they are still more so in their places, forming strokes 
of character and touches of truth and nature. 

Of all authors Shakspeare is the one who has least imitated or 
repeated himself. All other dramatists — nay, all other men — 
conscious of successful power in some particular line of develop- 
ment, have failed to resist the natural temptation which leads us 
to do often what we know we do well. Let us imagine any other 
dramatist capable of conceiving such a character as Hamlet, as 
Lear, as Othello, or as Falstaff. Would he not assuredly Iwve 



CHAP. VI.] SHAKSPEARE : HIS CHARACTERS. 117 

delighted to repeat snch ffrand creations, and show us these admi- 
rable rigures in different lights and attitudes ? Yet in Shakspeare, 
when once these terrible or humorous personages have quitted 
the scene, and finished that long life of woe or of merriment, con- 
densed, by the poet's art, into the three short hours of dramatic 
existence, they disappear for ever — we hear no more of them — 
they vanish as completely as real men would have done, and leave, 
like real men, no exactly similar beings behind them. 

Dealing with the universal sentiments and passions of mankind, 
this author has given us, in many places, different portraits of the 
same passion; but these delineations are as distinct and dissimilar 
in Shakspeare as they are in nature. 

How many portraits have we of jealousy, for example! Yet 
who cannot distinguish the jealousy of Othello from that of 
Leontes, that of Posthuraus from that of Ford, and a thousand 
other instances ? The jealousy is as different as the man, yet 
always as true to reality. What an infinite multitude of fools are 
to be found in Shakspeare ! yet no two are the least alike. We 
may follow an ascending scale of silliness through as many gra- 
dually and imperceptibly rising varieties of the genus, extending 
from almost complete imbecility to the highest degree of intellect, 
tinctured with that slight shade of fantastic mental distortion from 
which the human mind is hardly ever free. What a range of 
character from Audrey, Aguecheek, or Silence, to Jaques ! And 
why stop here ? Why not to Lear himself, to Hamlet, to Falstaff ? 
It is absolutely impossible to ascribe any important* speech in 
Shakspeare to the wrong person : and this is perhaps one of the 
most difficult points of the dramatic art — a point which has never 
been reached by any author but Shakspeare, and sometimes by 
Moliere. 

Wonderful, too, as are the individuality and originality of the 
more passionate or humorous characters, Shakspeare has suc- 
ceeded in giving, by light, imperceptible, infallible touches, quite 
as much reality and personality to a class of personages which in 
the works of all other writers of fiction are generally found uni- 
form, and even fade — we mean the delineations of young men and 
women, the heroes and heroines of comic or romantic adventures. 
Even Fielding, Scott, and Dickens, though possessing the far 
greater facilities afforded by narrative fiction, have seldom suc- 
ceeded in rendering such characters interesting in themselves ; 
that is, independently of the circumstances which surround them. 
Compare the Sophia and the Tom Jones of the first, the Waverlev 
and the Miss Wardour of the second, the Nicholas Nickleby and 
the Miss Maylie of the third, with Rosalind and Orlando, with 
Florizel, with Elelena, with Hero — nay, even with such secondary 
characters as Margaret, as iNIariana, as Laertes, as Lorenzo — and 



118 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. VI. 

we shall see that, while the elegant, and sometimes even delicate, 
creation of the romancer owes all its hold on our sympathies to 
the trials to which it is exposed, and to the patience and energy 
with which it undergoes them, the characters of the greatest of 
dramatists possess a real and distinct individuality, as subtly though 
not so strongly marked as that which divides Lear from Falstafli', 
or Isabella from Beatrice. 

The great art of Shakspeare, as a portrayer of character and 
passion, seems to consist in his manner of making his personages, 
accidentally, involuntarily, nay, even in spite of themselves, ex- 
press their own character, and admit us, as it were, into the 
inmost recesses of their hearts. And this is especially true of 
his passion. In the dramatists of the French classical school, in 
particular, the characters are very apt to give us — in noble and 
sounding verse, it is true, admirably reasoned and majestically 
harmonized — a description of the feelings which affect them. 
They, in short, say — " I am terrified," " 1 am angry," " I am in 
love." This Shakspeare's men and women, like real men and 
women, never do. Hamlet, asked by his mother what is the 
dreadful object on which his eyes are fixed, does not break out 
into a long tirade descriptive of it, but paints his own terror, and 
the spectre which causes it, in one line: — 

" On him, on him ! Look you, how pale he glares !" 

And this method (if it be not rather an intuition) is perceivable 
in every sc^ne and every character: it is found in the lightest as 
in the most solemn, in the most splendid as in the most pathetic 
scenes. 

The development of the fable in Shakspeare is generally con- 
ducted with that natural yet unrestrained coherence which is 
found in the real dramas of human life. The events, it is true, 
are often hurried towards the close of the drama, and trifling and 
unexpected circumstances, arising in the course of the action, 
often completely change what we should imagine had been the 
author's previous plan. But does not the same thing perpetually 
happen in the world? Is it not a profound truth that the most 
insignificant events perpetually modify the most important ac- 
tions? Does not experience show us that truth is stranger than 
fiction, that no event can be called unimportant excepting accord- 
ing to its consequences, and that no intellect is sufficiently vast 
and penetrating to trace all the consequences springing from even 
the most trivial act of our lives? 

In point of art it cannot be denied that Shakspeare has some- 
times hurried over the latter part of his dramas, and cut, with vio- 
lence and improbability, the Gordian knot of an intrigue which 
he had not time or perhaps patience to untie; but this defect is 



CHAP. VI.] SHAKSPEARE : HIS CHARACTERS. 119 

principally observable in those plays which internal evidence in- 
duces us to assign to the early period of his career. In many of 
the greatest works the dramatic complexity is as skilfully and 
completely resolved as the catastrophe is morally complete. 
What, for example, can be more complete than the resolution of 
the fable in 'Lear' and in ' Othello ?' The latter play, indeed, 
may be considered as a miracle of consummate constructive skill. 
There is not a scene, a speech, a line, which does not evidently 
bear upon and contribute to the catastrophe; and that catastrophe 
is in the highest degree terrible and pathetic. 

Of all the thousand errors prevalent respecting the genius and 
the works of Shakspeare, and which the industry of a respectful 
and affectionate and loving criticism has not yet entirely dispelled, 
perhaps the most fatal was a spirit of patronizing admiration and 
wondering approval, which seemed to consider his dramas as 
astonishing productions of an irregular and barbarous genius. Let 
it be to the eternal honour of Coleridge that he was the first to 
lead the way to a truer and more just appreciation of the poet of 
humanity, and to have shown his countrymen that the criticism 
which considered these wonderful creations as the work of acci- 
dental genius (absurd and contradictory as must appear such a 
collocation of the two words) was the mere dream of pedantry 
and ignorance. "What!" he says with a noble indignation, 
"does God perform miracles in sport?" Is it conceivable that 
these wonders of intellect and imagination — these worlds of fancy, 
redolent of beauty, of life, of a glorified reality — 

"All that is most beauteous — imaged there 
In happier beauty ; more pellucid streams, 
An ampler ether, a diviner air, 

And fields invested with purpurea] gleams; 
Climes which the sun, who sheds the brightest day 
Earth knows, is all unworthy to survey" — 

that all this subtle music of humanity, all this deep knowledge of 
the human heart — its passions, its powers, its aspirations — could 
be the result of accident — of a happy genius in an age of bar- 
barism ? — that the woolstapler's son of Stratford could have 
created, by accident, Juliet and Cordelia, Imogen and Miranda, 
Kalherine and Cleopatra, Perdita and Ophelia ? — that it was acci- 
dent which reflected on the never-dying page of the dramatist of 
the Blackfriars the thunderous gloom of Lear's moral atmosphere, 
the fairy-peopled sunshine of Prospero's enchanted isle, the 
moonlit stillness of the garden at Belmont, the merry lamplight 
of the Boar's Head in Eastcheap, or the warm English daylight 
of Windsor? No! such an opinion would be no less absurd (we 
had almost written blasphemous) than the sceptic's fancy that this 
earth was the result of blind chance and a fortuitous concourse 
of atoms. 



120 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. VII. 

From the works of Shakspeare maybe gleaned a complete col- 
lection of precepts adapted to every condition of life and to every 
conceivable circnmstance of human affairs. The wisest and best 
of mankind have gone to him for maxims of wisdom and of 
goodness — maxims expressed with the artlessness and simplicity 
of a casual remark, but pregnant with the thought of consummate 
experience and penetration: from him the courtier has learned 
grace, the moralist prudence, the theologian divinity, the soldier 
enterprise, the king royalty: his wit is unbounded, his passion 
inimitable, his splendour unequalled ; and over all these varied 
glories he has thrown a halo of human sympathy no less tender 
than his genius was immeasurable and profound, a light reflected 
from the most gentle, generous, loving spirit that ever glowed 
within a human heart: the consummate union of the Beautiful 
and the Good. 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE SHAKSPEARIAN DRAMATISTS. 



Ben Jonson : The Humours — His Roman Plnys — Comedies — Plots. Beaumont 
and P'i etcher — Massinger — Chapman — Dekker — Webster — Middleton — Mars- 
ton — Ford — Shirley. 

We now come to a galaxy of great names, whose splendour, 
albeit inferior to the unmatched effulgence of Shakspeare's genius, 
yet conspires to glorify the reigns of Elizabeth and James. The 
literary triumphs of this wonderful epoch are principally confined 
to the drama, which " heaven of invention" was, to use the 
beautiful expression of one of these playwrights, " studded as a 
frosty night with stars;" and deeply indeed do we regret that 
our space will only permit us to give a very short and cursory 
notice of the individual members of this admirable class of 
writers — 

" those shining stars, that run _ 

Their glorious course round Shakspeare's golden sun." a 

The first of these illustrious dramatists whom we shall notice" 
is Ben Jonson, a mighty and solid genius, whose plays bear an 
impress of majestic art and slow but powerful elaboration, dis- 
tinguishing them from the careless ease and unpremeditated abun- 
dance so strongly characterising the drama of this period. He 
was born in 1574, ten years after Shakspeare, who honoured him 



CHAP. VII.] BEN JONSON : HIS POSITION AS A DRAMATIST. 121 

with his close friendship and well-merited protection. He was 
undoubtedly one of the most learned men of this or indeed any 
age of English literature ; and he brought to his dramatic task a 
much greater supply of scholastic knowledge than was possessed 
by any of his contemporaries. Educated at Cambridge, he 
adopted the stage as his profession when about twenty years of 
age, and when he had already acquired very extensive knowledge 
of the world, and experience in various scenes of " many-coloured 
life," in the university and even in the camp ; for Ben had served 
with distinguished bravery in the wars of tlie Low Countries. 
As an actor he is reported to have completely failed, but it was 
at this period that he began to exhibit, in the literary department 
of his profession, that genius which has placed his name next to 
that of the greatest. Like all his contemporary dramatists, Jonson 
began bv repairing and adapting older plays, and his name is con- 
nected, like that of so many of the dramatic debutans of this 
period, with several of such recastings ; for example, with that 
of ' Hieronymo,' &c. It was not till 1596 that he produced his 
first original piece, the admirable comedy of ' Every Man in his 
Humour,' which gave infallible proof that a new and powerful 
genius had risen on the English stage. This comedy was brought 
out (considerably altered from its first sketch), at the Globe theatre, 
in 1598, and in some degree, it is related, through the instru- 
mentality of Shakspeare, who acted a principal part in the piece. 
It was soon evident that Jonson had cut out for himself a new 
path in the drama ; and he rapidly attained, and steadily preserved, 
the highest reputation for genius and for art. In fact, Jonson, 
during the whole of his life, occupied a position at the very head 
of the dramatists of the day — a position perhaps even superior to 
that of Shakspeare himself; nor is this wonderful. The qualities 
of Jonson's peculiar excellence were more obvious and appreciable 
than the delicate and, as it were, coy merits of the great poet, 
whose works, possessing all the depth and universality of nature, 
require no less study, subtlety, and discrimination in him who 
M'oiild understand them as they deserve. All, on the contrary, 
could admire Jonson's wonderful knowledge of real life, his vast 
and accurate observation of human vices and follies, his some- 
what rough but straightforward and vigorous delineations of cha- 
racter, and the epigrammatic condensation of a strong and mas- 
culine style, armed with all the weapons of classic rhetoric, and 
decorated with the splendours of unequalled learning. Jonson 
was, in short, a great comic dramatist; and it will be found that 
the chief excellence even of his two tragedies is less of a tragic 
than of a comic kind, and that they please us rather by their ad- 
mirable delineations of manners than by those pictures of passion 
and sentiment which it is the legitimate province of tragedy to 
II 



122 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. VII. 

present. The peculiar excellence of this great writer lay in the 
representation of the weaknesses and afTectations of common and 
domestic life — in the delineation of what were then called the 
" humours," a word which may be explained to mean those 
innate and peculiar distortions and deformities of moral physi- 
ognomy with which nature has stamped the characters of indivi- 
duals in every highly artificial and civilized state of society, and 
which are afterwards exaggerated and rendered inveterate by 
vanity and affectation. In delineating these obliquities of cha- 
racter Jonson proceeded philosophically, we may even say scien- 
tifically : he appears to have carefully and minutely anatomised 
the follies and foibles of humanity, and to have accumulated in 
his comic or satiric pictures (for his comedy is of the satiric kind) 
every trait and little stroke of the particular folly in question, 
with a most consummate skill and industry; frequently con- 
centrating in one character not only all the moral phenomena 
which his own vast and accurate observation could supply, aided 
as that was by a systematic and elaborate classification, but often 
exhausting all the touches left us in the moral portraits of the 
historians and satirists of antiquity. 

His Roman plays, indeed, ' Catiline' and ' Sejanus,' the two 
tragedies of which we have spoken, and the comedy of ' Po- 
etaster,' may be considered as absolute mosaics of language, of 
traits of character and points of history, extracted from the works 
of Tacitus, of Sallust, of Juvenal, of Horace — in short, the quintes- 
sence of Roman literature. Yet such is Jonson's skill, and so 
perfect a harmony was there between the vigorous, majestic, Ho- 
9nan character of his own mind, and the tone of the literature 
which he studied so profoundly, that this mosaic, though com- 
posed of an infinite number of distinct particles, has the most ab- 
solute unity of effect. Nay, more, he has done the same thing in 
those comedies which have for their subject modern domestic life 
and modern manners; and he has managed to introduce, in the 
portraiture of the ludicrous and contemptible persons of English 
citizen life in the sixteenth century, the strokes of humour and 
character taken from the delineations of Roman manners executed 
by the great satiric artists of the time of the Cresars. This is un- 
doubtedly a point of consummate skill in rendering available the 
stores of a species of learning which we should at first sight con- 
sider rather as an encumbrance than a useful instrument; but it 
arises also in some measure from that classical tone of character 
which we have attributed to Jonson : he was, indeed, 

" More an antique Pioman than a Dane." H 

It must, however, be confessed that Jonson's characters are 
someiimes too elaborate, too scientific, and overloaded with details 



CHAP. VII.H BEN JONSON: HIS CHARACTERS. 123 

which, though intlividiially true and comic, are never found con- 
centrated in one person. He has therefore been accused, and 
not unjustly, of painting, not men and women, but impersonations 
of their leading follies and vices. And in this respect a parallel 
between Jonson and Shakspeare would be exceedingly unfavour- 
able to the former. Both have given us admirable portraits, 
for example, of braggarts, of coxcombs, and of fools ; but while 
Shakspeare's are real men and women, with real individuality of 
their own, but in whom the bragging, the coxcombry, the folly 
happen to be remarkable features, the comic characters of Jonson 
cannot be separated from the predominant folly ridiculed. We 
might conceive Parolles becoming a modest and sensible man, 
Osric a plain-spoken and downright citizen, and Slender or Ague- 
cheek transformed by some miracle into reasonable beings, and 
something of them would remain ; but imagine Bobadil cured of 
his boasting. Sir Fastidious of his courtly puppyism, or the ex- 
quisite Master Stephen of his imbecility, and nothing would be 
left behind. 

In the construction of his plots, Jonson is immeasurably supe- 
rior to all the other dramatists of the period. Naturally haughty 
and confident in his own genius, and entertaining, too, a much 
higher opinion than was common at the time of the gravity and 
importance of the dramatist's office, he scorned to found his plays 
upon the substructure of the Italian novelist or the legends of 
Middle Age history; and consequently we are never offended in his 
dramas with that improbability of incident, inconsistency of cha- 
racter, iiurried and imperfect development, which is the principal 
structural defect of most of the dramatic works of this period^ 
a defect, indeed, from which Shakspeare's productions are by no 
means free. His plots Jonson always invented himself; and 
some of them are perfect models of complicated yet natural in- 
trigue. It has been justly said that the comedy of the 'Silent 
Woman,' of the ' Alchemist,' of ' Volpone,' are inimitable as series 
of incidents, natural, yet interesting, gradually and necessarily 
converging to a catastrophe at once probable and unexpected. 

The language of this great dramatist is in the highest degree 
vigorous, picturesque, and lively : it possesses, it is true, little or 
none of that sweet and flowing harmony, that living and trans- 
parent grace, which makes the golden verses of our Shakspeare 
absolutely superior to the far-famed diction of the Greek poets; 
but it is an admirably strong and flexible medium for his acute 
and masterly exhibition of character; and though in general not 
much elevated above the level of weighty and powerful prose, 
sometimes rises to a considerable pitch of rhetorical splendour. 
It must be confessed that Jonson wants that deep sympathy with 
human nature which is the true source of grace of language, as 



124 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [ciIAP. VII. 

it is of tenderness of thought; but there is often to be found in 
him a kind of gallant bravery of language, a splendour of imagery 
recalling to us the dusky glow of liis great prototype Juvenal, 
with whose genius the literary character of Jonson has many 
points of resemblance. Both writers describe the follies of their 
kind in a contemptuous and sarcastic spirit, and their crimes with 
a powerful but somewhat too declamatory invective ; and both 
appeared to have less sympathy with virtue than detestation for 
vice : they were both, too, inclined to treat with indifference, if 
not with contempt, the virtues and the graces of the female cha- 
racter — a sure sign of hardness of mind, Jonson's two Roman 
plays, ' Catiline' and ' Sejanus,' are of course founded on history, 
the former of Sallust, and the latter of Tacitus. Though pre- 
senting a noble and impressive copy of the terrible outlines of 
their subject, it may be objected that the principal characters in 
each are so unmixedly hateful or contemptible, that they are un- 
fit for the purposes of the tragic dramatist. The senate scene in 
the latter, and the character of Tiberius, are very grandly con- 
ceived, and the assembly of conspirators in ' Catiline,' together 
with the description of the battle and the death of the hero, re- 
lated by Petreius, are among the iinest declamatory passages in 
English poetry. These two dramas are in verse. 

Of the comedies, the finest, in point of richness of character, 
are ' Every Man in his Humour,' the 'Alchemist' (the scenes of 
which are in London), and ' Volpone.' In the first the charac- 
ters are numerous and admirably delineated ; the interest of the 
second rests upon the jovial villany and cunning sensuality of the 
hero ; and the third contains some richly contrasted touches of 
vulgar knavery and self-deluding expectation, wrought up with 
astonishing vivacity. We have already spoken of the excellence 
of plot which characterises the ' Silent Woman,' though the chief 
personage is a character so rare as to be, if not impossible, at 
least so improbable that nothing but its exquisite humour can re- 
concile us to it. ' Bartholomew Fair' is full of satire and anima- 
tion, but would have little interest for a reader of the present 
time, being a satire upon the Puritans ; and of the other pieces, 
some are merely local and temporary attacks on individuals, as 
the ' Poetaster,' ' Cynthia's Revels,' and tlie ' Tale of a Tub,' 
while others are generally considered inferior in merit : we may 
instance the ' Magnetic Lady,' the ' Staple of News,' and the 
' New Inn.' The comedies are written, some entirely in prose, 
some in mingled prose and verse. It would be unjust not to state 
that, though tlie above remarks will be found to apply generally 
to Jonson, he has occasionally attained to a high degree of fan- 
ciful elegance of language and a singular delicacy of harmony. 
Many passages may be cited, particularly from his Masques, his 



CHAP. VII.] BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 125 

unfinished pastoral comedy of the ' Sad Shepherd,' — a most ex- 
quisite fragment — and all his songs, which have seldom been 
equalled for flowing elegance. 

In spite, therefore, of his faults, both as a man and as an author 
■ — his arrogance, his intemperance, his sarcastic and sometimes 
coarse humour, his pedantry and his pride — we must ever hold him 
to have been a great and a good man ; grateful, generous, valiant, 
free spoken, with something of the old Roman spirit in him, a 
mighty artist, and a man of a gigantic and cultivated genius ; and 
we may reverently echo the beautiful words of the epitaph which 
long remained inscribed upon his grave — 
" rare Ben Jonson !" 

He died, in poverty, in 1637, and was buried, in a vertical po- 
sition, in Westminster Abbey- 
There is a far stronger resemblance between the leading fea- 
tures of Shakspeare's dramatic manner and that of the two illus- 
trious authors of whom it is now our delightful duty to speak — 
Beaumont and Fletcher, the twin stars of the English literary 
sky. These two men, each of distinguished birth and considera- 
ble fortune, and bound by the closest ties of friendship, present 
the rare and admirable picture of a pair of friends, uniting, during 
a long period of authorship, their powers in the joint production 
of a multitude of admirable works, in which the respective ex- 
cellencies of each were so intimately mingled, that it is almost 
impossible to trace the pen of either separately from that of the 
other. 

" They still have slept together. 
Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together ; 
And vvheresoe'er they went, like Juno's swans. 
Still they went coupled and inseparable." 

And there are no works in the whole range of literature which 
give sufh noble pictures of the friendship of elevated and gene- 
rous spirits as the twin-born dramas of these illustrious fellow- 
labourers. 

They wrote under the immediate influence of the Shakspearian 
manner, and were obviously imitators of the great poet — not ser- 
vile copyists, but free and enlightened followers. They were 
exceedingly prolific as authors, the editions of their works con- 
sisting of fifty-two pieces, the greater part of which were com- 
posed in partnership. This association was only dissolved by 
the death of Beaumont, who died, before he had completed his 
thirtieth year, in March, 1615; his companion Fletcher surviving 
him till 1625, when he died in the great plague, ten years after 
his brother dramatist, than whom he was ten years older. They 
appear, as we have said, to have set Shakspeare before them as 

11* 



126 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. VII. 

their model, not however in his vaster and completer develop- 
ments of tragic passion, or in his deep-searching analysis of 
character, nor even in iiis rich and genial creations of humour ; but 
rather that phase of his dramatic art in which he has ventured 
into the airy world of graceful and imaginative fiction : not, in 
short, such characters as Macbeth, Othello, FalstafT, Hamlet, or 
Shylock, but rather the persons which people the fairy isle of Pros- 
pero, or the sunny gardens of Illyria. They are in particular 
admired for the fresh, and vigorous, and courtly pictures they 
have given of youthful generosity and friendship, and for the oc- 
casionally happy portraits of love and innocent confidence ; nor 
must we forget the many admirable figures of loyal and military 
devotion to be found in many exquisite characters of war-worn 
veterans. 

In their plots they are even more careless and irregular than 
Shakspeare; never scrupling to commit the most outrageous 
offences against consistency of character and probability of event, 
and appearing to rely mainly on their skill in presenting striking 
and picturesque situation, and their mastery over every varied tone 
of majestic, airy, and animated dialogue. 

"There are," says Campbell, speaking of these two dramatists, 
" such extremes of grossness and magnificence in their dramas, 
so much sweetness and beauty interspersed with views of nature 
either falsely romantic or vulgar beyond reality; there is so 
much to animate and amuse us, and yet so much that we would 
willingly overlook, that I cannot help comparing the contrasted 
impressions which they make to those which we receive from 
visiting some great and ancient city, picturesquely but irregularly 
built, glittering with spires and surrounded by gardens, but ex- 
hibiting in many quarters the lanes and hovels of wretchedness. 
'J'hey have scenes of wealthy and high life, which remind us of 
courts and palaces frequented by elegant females and high-spirited 
gallants, whilst their noble old martial characters, with Caraclacus 
in the midst of them, may inspire us with the same sort of regard 
which we pay to the rough-hewn magnificence of an ancient 
fortress." 

The prevailing vices of these great but unequal writers are, 
first, the shocking occasional indelicacy and coarseness of their 
language, and, secondly, the frequent inconsistency of their charac- 
ters. With respect to the former, it is no excuse to say that it 
is partly to be attributed to the custom of the female parts being 
at ibis period universally represented by boys ; nor is it much 
palliation to consider this licentiousness of speech as the vice of 
the times. It is true that the charge of indecency may be safely 
maintained against nearly all the writers of this wonderful [(criod, 
am! we know that the stage has a peculiar tendency to fall into 



CHAP. VII.] BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 127 

tliis error; but Shakspeare has shown us that it is very possible 
to avoid this species of pruriency, and to portray the female 
character not in its warmth only and its tenderness, but also in 
its purity. The most singular thing is, that many of the mox'e 
indelicate scenes, and much of the coarsest language in Beau- 
mont and Fletcher, will be found to have been composed with the 
express purpose of exhibiting the virtue and purity of their he- 
roines. It cannot, however, be denied that it is but an inartificial 
and dangerous mode of exalting the triumph of virtue, to repre- 
sent it as in immediate contact with the coarsest and most debasing 
vice. Nor is that Juvenalian manner of satire either to be imi- 
tated or approved which consists in elaborate description of im- 
morality, however strong may be the tone of its invective, and 
however elevated the height from which its thunders may be 
hurled. The precepts of good sense will coincide with the Duke's 
answer to Jaques in ' As You Like It :' — 

" Jaq. Give me leave 

To speak my mind, and I will through and through 
Cleanse the foul body of the infected world, 
If they will patiently receive my medicine. 

Duke. Fie on thee ! I can tell what thou wouldst do, — 
Most mischievous foul sin in chiding sin ; 
For thou thyself hast been a libertine; 
And all the embossed sores and headed evils, 
That thou with licence of free foot hast caught, 
Wouldst thou disgorge into the general world." 

The other main vice of Beaumont and Fletcher is the extra- 
ordinary and monstrous inconsistency of the characters. No- 
thing is more common in their plays than to see a valiant and 
modest youth become, in the course of a few scenes, and with- 
out any cause or reason, a coward and a braggart; and the 
devoted and loyal subject of the first act metamorphosed into the 
traitor and assassin of the third; the pure and high-born princess 
transformed into the coarse and profligate virago. In order to 
exalt some particular virtue in their heroes, these writers some- 
times represent them as enduring indignities and undergoing trials 
to which no human being woukl submit, or the very submission 
to which would render impossible the existence of the virtue in 
question. 

In spite of the general truth of the foregoing remarks, our 
readers must not be surprised to learn that the plays of these 
dramatists abound in many exquisite portrails of female heroism 
and magnanimity. Indeed, the principal defect of their female 
characters (at least of those which are really striking and attractive) 
is that they seem to be conceived in a spirit too romantic and 
ideal, and are, as Campbell well expresses it, "rather fine idols 
of the imagination than probable types of nature:" but it would 



128 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. VII. 

be unjust to forget that the polluted stream of such base and mon- 
strous conceptions as ' The Island Princess,' and ' Cupid's Re- 
venge,' flows from the same source as the pure and sparkling 
fountain of 'Philaster,' of 'The Double Marriage,' of 'The Maid's 
Tragedy,' and of ' Bonduca.' We do not mean that even these 
latter works are free from objectionable passages; but what is 
revolting might easily be cleared away, and would leave much 
to elevate the fancy and to purify the heart. Beaumout and 
Fletcher have been justly praised by all the critics, from Dryden 
downwards, for their beautiful delineations of youthful friend- 
ship, and for the ease, grace, and vivacity w-hich distinguish their 
dialogue, particularly such dialogue as takes place between high- 
spirited and gallant young men. In this they probably drew from 
themselves. 

Their comic characters, though generally very unnatural, and 
devoid of that rich internal humour — that luce di dentro, as the 
Italian artists phrase it — which makes Shakspeare's so admirable, 
are written with a droll extravagance and fearless verve which 
seldom fail to excite a laugh. The Lieutenant, who has drunk 
a love-potion, and is so absurdly enamoured of the old king; 
Piniero, Cacafogo, La Writ, the hungry priest and his clerk, and 
a multitude of others, though fantastic and grotesque caricatures, 
are yet caricatures executed with much freedom and spirit. 

According to the ancient tradition, Beaumont is said to have 
possessed more judgment and elevation, Fletcher more invention 
and vivacity. How far this can be proved by comparing those 
works written conjointly by the two illustrious fellow-labourers, 
with those composed after Beaumont's death by his surviving 
friend, it is difficult to determine. We think it may be safely con- 
cluded that Beaumont possessed more markedly the tragic spirit, 
Fletcher the vis comica — one of the best of the comic pieces being 
Fletcher's ' Rule a Wife and have a Wife.' 

We must now pass rapidly over a number of mighty yet less 
illustrious names, which in any-other age, and in any other country, 
would have been secure of immortality. The works of these 
dramatists, so admired in their own day, and possessing all the 
qualities likely to render them permanently popular, have been 
long condemned (that is, during the whole period intervening 
between the civil wars and the beginning of the present century) 
to an obscurity and neglect incredible to those who are acquainted 
with their various and striking merits, and inexplicable to all who 
•are ignorant of the capricious tyranny of popular taste. 

Disinterred from the cobwebs of two hundred years, and brought 
to light by commentators and philologists eager to explain the 
works of the greatest among their glorious army, these authors 
have gradually attracted the attenliou of the general reader in 



CHAP. VII.] MASSINGER CHAPMAN. 129 

England, and may now be considered as finally and solidly es- 
tablished in popular and national admiration. Strange! that the 
very genius which eclipsed them all, and threw them as if for 
ever into the abyss of neglect and " the portion of weeds and 
out-worn faces," should have been in an after age, the indirect 
means of restoring to them that heritage of glory which they ap- 
peared to have irredeemably forfeited ! 

The next name to which we shall invite the reader's attention 
is that of Philip Massinger, a man who passed his life in strug- 
gling with poverty and distress. He has left us a considerable 
number of dramas, the greatest part of them in that mixed manner 
so general at this time, in which the passions exhibited are of a 
grave and elevated character, the language rich and ornamented, 
and yet the persons and events hardly to be called heroic. Of 
these works the finest are ' The City Madam,' ' The Great Duke 
of Florence,' ' the Bondman,' ' The Virgin Martyr,' and ' a New 
Way to Pay Old Debts.' In the first and last mentioned of these 
plays the author has given a most striking and powerful picture 
of oppression, and the triumphant self-glorifying of ill-got wealth. 
The character of Sir Giles Overreach in the one, and that of Luke 
in the other, are masterpieces. In expressing the dignity of virtue, 
and in showing greatness of soul rising superior to circumstance 
and fate, Massinger exhibits so peculiar a vigour and felicity, that 
it is impossible not to conceive such delineations (in which the 
poet delighted) to be a reflection of his own proud and patient 
soul, and perhaps, too, but too true a memorial of " the rich man's 
scorn, the proud man's contumely," which he had himself under- 
gone. In the tender and pathetic Massinger had no mastery; in 
the moral gloom of guilt, in the crowded agony of remorse, in 
pninting the storm and tempest of the moral atmosphere, he is 
undoubtedly a great and mighty artist; and in expressing the sen- 
timents of dignity and virtue, cast down but not humbled by un- 
deserved misfortune, he is almost unequalled. His versification, 
though never flowingly harmonious, is skilful and learned, an 
appropriate vehicle for the elevation of the sentiments; and in the 
description of rich and splendid scenes he is peculiarly powerful 
and impressive. The soliloquy of Luke in his brother's counting- 
house, when the long-despised " poor relation" suddenly finds 
himself the possessor of enormous wealth, and the gorgeous de- 
scription in which he enumerates the gold and jewels and " skins 
of parchment" in which his newly-acquired power is condensed, 
and his long-desired vengeance on his oppressors — all this is 
conceived in a dramatic spirit of the highest order. Massinger 
was born about 1584, and died in great poverty in March, 1640. 
In reviewing the long succession of squalid lives and early and 
obscure deaths which composes the biography of the dramatic 



130 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAT. VII. 

school of Elizabeth, it is very gratifying to meet with an illustri- 
ous poet whose existence was as tranquil as his productions were 
excellent. This is George Chapman, one of the most learned 
men of his age, and the author of the finest translation of Homer 
in the English language. Deeply imbued with the spirit of Greek 
poetry, and baptised, so to say, in the fire of its earliest and most 
heroic inspirations — in the works of Homer and of ^schylus^ 
Chapman has infused into his dramas, and particularly into those 
written on classical subjects, far more of the true Greek spirit 
than will be found in a thousand of those pale and frigid centos 
which go under the name of regular classical tragedies ; and 
would be an unanswerable reply to the prejudices and ignorance 
of those foreign critics who so glibly accuse the British drama of 
irregularity and barbarism. The life of this great and learned man 
was worthy of his genius, "preserving," to use the words of Oldys, 
"in his conduct, the true dignity of poesy, which he compared to 
the flower of the sun, that disdains to open its leaves to the eye of 
a smoking taper." He died, at the age of seventy-seven, in 1634. 

We will pass over Dekkar, a most prolific and multifarious 
dramatist, whose productions, however, are difficult to examine 
and appreciate, from his having generally written in partnership 
with other playwrights. He appears to have been by no means 
destitute of imagination, of pathos, or of humour; though his 
genius has always appeared to us rather lyric than dramatic. He 
was celebrated in his own day for his literary warfare with .Ton- 
son, whom he attacked in his 'Satiro-mastix;' his finest passages 
are marked by great felicity of idea, and a delicate music of 
expression. He died in 1638. 

John Webster, a mighty and funereal genius, is the next author 
we shall mention. We can compare his mind to nothing so well 
as to some old Gothic cathedral, with its arches soaring heaven- 
ward, but carved with monsters and angels, with saints and fiends, 
in grotesque confusion. Gleams of sunlight fall here and there, 
it is true, through the huge window, but they are coloured with 
the sombre dies of painted glass, bearing records of human pride 
and human nothingness, and they fall in long slanting columns, 
twinkling silently with motes and dusty splendour, upon the tombs 
of the mighty; lighting dimly up now the armour of a recumbent 
Templar or the ruff of some dead beauty, and now feebly losing 
themselves amid the ragged coffins and scutcheons in the vaults 
below. His fancy was wild and powerful, but gloomy and 
monstrous, dwelling ever on the vanities of earthly glory, on the 
nothingness of pomp, not without many terrible hints at the 
emptiness of our trust, and many bold questionings of human 
hopes of a hereafter. "His phantasms appear often, and do fre- 
quent cemeteries, charnel-houses, and churches, where the devil, 



CHAP. VII.] WEBSTER MIDDLETON FORD. 131 

like an insolent champion, beholds with pride the spoils and 
trophies of his victory over Adam." Death is indeed his Muse; 
not the rose-crowned deity of the ancients, the brother of sleep, 
the bringer of repose, the winged genius with the extinguished 
torch, but the hideous skeleton of the monkish imagination, the 
"grim anatomy," with his crawling blood-worms, and all the 
loathsome horrors of physical corruption. 

His most striking plays are 'The White Devil,' 'The Duchess 
of Malfy' (Amalfi), 'Guise, or the Massacre of France,' and ' The 
Devil's Law-case.' In the second of these works, a tragedy in 
which pity and horror are carried to an intense and almost unen- 
durable pitch, tlie death of the innocent and beautiful heroine is 
most powerfully conceived: his simple, direct, straightforward 
pathos is in the highest degree tragic and affecting; but his plots 
are totally extravagant, crowded with supernumerary horrors; and 
if he is occasionally touching and graceful, such passages resem- 
ble less the growth of a rich and generous soil, than the pale 
flowers which sometimes bloom amid the rank and obscene herb- 
age of a crowded burial-ground, springing from fat corruption and 
watered with hopeless tears. This strange and powerful genius 
was contemporary in his life and death, as it is supposed, with 
Dekkar, and these two dramatists wrote many pieces together. 

Our space will only allow us to make a brief allusion to Mid- 
dlelon and Marston, the former of whom is remarkable for the 
use he has made in one of his plays of the popular witch or sor- 
ceress of his country's superstition, a circumstance to which some 
critics have attributed the original conception of Shakspeare's 
wondrous supernatural machinery in Macbeth. Middleton's 
witches are, however, nothing more than the traditional mischiev- 
ous old women, described, it is true, with great vigour and spirit, 
while those of the greater bard are, as Charles Lamb finely says, 
"foul anomalies, of whom we know not whence tliey are sprung, 
nor whether they have beginning or ending. As they are with- 
out human passions, so they seem to be without liuman relations. 
They come with thunder and lightning, and vanish to airy music. 
This is all we know of them. Except Hecate, they have no 
names ; which heightens their mysteriousness." 

Marston is chiedy remarkable for a fine tone of moral satire : 
some of his invectives against vice and folly are grand abundant 
outpourings of Juvenalian eloquence, not without some of Juve- 
nal's grim mirth and grave pleasantry. 

We must confess that our favourite among the minor Elizabethan 
dramatists — that is, after Sbakspeare, Jonson, and Fletcher — is 
John Ford. Of a melancholy and pensive character — witness 
the strong j)ortrait sketched by a contemporary hand — 

" Deep in a dump John Ford alone was got 
With folded arms and melancholy hat;" — 



132 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. VII. 

sufficientlylearned to enrich his scenes with many beautiful images 
borrowed from the ancients ; possessing an ear for the softest 
harmony, and a heart pecuHarly sensitive to pure and elevated 
emotion, this dramatist has depicted the passions, and particularly 
the love, of youth and innocence, with a tenderness and force 
Avhich almost equal Shakspeare himself. Ford's instrument is 
of no great compass, but its tones are unmatched for softness, 
and he makes it "discourse most eloquent music." His finest 
plays are ' The Lover's Melancholy,' ' The Brother and Sister,' 
'Love's Sacrifice,' ' The Fancies, Chaste antt Noble,' and, above 
all, the admirable tragedy of ' The Broken Heart.' Do not these 
exquisite and fanciful titles seem to give earnest of purity, grace, 
tenderness, chivalrous love, and patient sufl'ering? And the reader 
will not be disappointed. We do not mean to say that Ford is not 
sometimes coarse, sometimes licentious, and sometimes extrava- 
gant. Unfortunately the audiences of that age required an inter- 
mixture of comic scenes, even in the most serious dramas; and 
Ford's genius was the very reverse of comic. With no humour in 
his soul, he seems, when trying to write his comic scenes (which 
are, with few exceptions, base and contemptible in the extreme), 
to have determined by a violent effort to renounce his own refined 
and modest character, and like a bashful man, who generally be- 
comes impudent when he attempts to conquer his natural infirmity, 
he rushes at once from the airiest and most courtly elegance to 
the vilest and meanest buftbonery. But in his true sphere, what 
dramatist was ever greater? What author has ever painted with 
a more delicate and reverent hand the innocence, the timid ardour 
of youthful passion — 

" lesperanze, gl' afFetti, 
La data fe, le tenerezze ; i primi 
Sgambievoli sospiri, i primi sguardi ?" — 

and who has ever approached him in the representation of the pa- 
tience and self-denial of that noblest and most unselfish of pas- 
sions — of the undying constancy of breaking hearts — in all the 
more divine and ethereal aspects of the sentiments? In the last 
play which we have spoken of, the pathos is absolutely carried 
so far that it oversteps the true limits of dramatic sutTerance ; nay, 
almost transgresses the bounds of human endurance. How con- 
fident must he have been in his own mastery over every mani- 
festation of the passion which he has so delighted to portray, to 
have ventured in one drama two such characters as Penthea and 
Calantha ! Ford has also never failed to interest us in a class of 
personages which it is very difiicult to render attractive — the cha- 
racters of hopeless yet unrepining lovers. We need only men- 
tion Orgihis and the noble Malfato. 

We now come to the last of these great dramatists, James 



CHAP. VIII.] THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 133 

Shirley. He was a man of learned education, who was at first 
destined for the clerical profession, but, disappointed in his hojies, 
took refuge in those two inevitable asylums of indigent erudition, 
first the school, and afterwards the theatre. His life was full of 
adventure, for it extended over a most busy period, namely, from 
1596 till after the Restoration. He had indeed passed through 
many vicissitudes, for he had fought in the civil wars on the roy- 
alist side ; and his name forms the connecting link between the 
two periods of dramatic art, so widely different, one of which is 
typified in Shakspeare, and the other in Congreve. His works 
are praised for the elegance, nature, good sense, and sprightliness 
of their comic language ; for the purity of the characters, particu- 
larly the female ones ; and for the ease and animation of his plots. 
He has not much pathos, it is true, nor much knowledge of the 
heart ; but there are few dramatists whose works give a more 
agreeable and unforced transcript of the ordinary scenes of life, 
conveyed in more graceful language. His humour, though not 
very profound, is true and fanciful, and his plays may always be 
read with pleasure, and often with profit. His best dramas are ' The 
Brothers,' ' The Lady of Pleasure,' and ' The Grateful Servant.' 



CHAPTER VHI. 

THE GREAT DIVINES. 

Theological Eloquence of England and France — The Civil War — Persecution 
of the Clergy — Richard Hooker — His Life and Character — Treatise on Eccle- 
siastical Polity — Jeremy Taylor — Compared with Hooker — His Life — Liberty 
of Prophesying — His other Works — The Restoration — Taylor's Sermons — 
Hallam's Criticism — Taylor's Digressive Style — Isaac Barrow — His immense 
Acquirements — Compared to Pascal — The English Universities. 

In the department of Christian philosophy, and particularly in 
that subdivision of theological literature which embraces the elo- 
quence of the pulpit, England has generally been considered infe- 
rior to many other European nations, and to France in particular. 
So splendid indeed are the triumphs of reasoning and of elo- 
quence which are recalled to the remembrance of every cultivated 
mind at the mention of such illustrious names as Pascal, as Bossuet, 
as Bourdaloue, that the general reader (above all, the Continental 
one) is apt to doubt whether the Church of England has been 
adorned by any intellects comparable to these bright and shining 
lamps of Catholicism. We hope that we shall not be considered 
12 



134 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. VIII. 

presumptuous if we endeavour to show that Great Britain does 
possess monuments of Christian eloquence equal or at least not 
inferior to the immortal productions of these great men, and, at 
the same time, if we attempt to explain how it has happened that 
the triumphs of English divinity are not so generally known 
and appreciated as those of the great French llieologians. This 
latter circumstance will be found to proceed not only from the 
much more universal study throughout Europe of the French lan- 
guage as compared to the English (a partiality which, it must be 
confessed, is now daily wearing away), but also in some measure 
from the points of difference in many matters of religious belief 
and ecclesiastical discipline existing between the Anglican Church 
and that of Rome. 

There is, in short, a much greater apparent accordance, in these 
points, between the opinions of most of the Continental Churches 
and those of Rome, than exists between Romanism and the 
Church of England. Add to this, too, the more imposing and 
dazzling character of the French style, particularly that of the 
French pulpit, at the splendid epoch so brilliantly adorned by 
these admirable productions, and we shall not be at a loss to at- 
tribute to its real cause the comparative neglect experienced by 
the works of Hooker, Taylor, Barrow, South, and Stillingfleet. 

In instituting a general comparison between the productions of 
the French and English intellect, few persons have failed to re- 
mark one very striking point of dissimilitude, if not even of con- 
trast ; and this is, that the former will be found to possess their 
chief and characteristic beauties externally, while those of the 
latter are not to be perceived or appreciated without a greater de- 
gree of study and examination. We do not mean, by the use of 
ihe word " external," in any way to imply that the productions 
of French genius do not possess merits as real and as solid as 
those which adorn any literature in the world ; we wish to ex- 
press that those merits lie nearer to the surface and are brought 
more prominendy forward in the great trophies of French intel- 
lect than in those of the British mind. Whether we examine the 
drama of the two countries, their eloquence, or their poetry, we 
shall almost invariably find that, while the merits and peculiar 
graces of the Gallic intellect are conspicuously and prominently 
placed as it were in the foreground of the picture, the British 
Muse is of a coyer and more retiring temper, and only yields her- 
self to ardent and persevering pursuit — 

" With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay." 

This deep and internal character of our literature arises in a 
great measure from that Teutonic element which plays so import- 
ant a part in every development of English nationality — in the 



CHAP. VIII.] THEOLOGICAL LITKRATURE. 135 

literature of the country, in its language, in its social condition, 
and in its political institutions. The regular and beautiful forms 
of classical literature — simple, severe, intelligible as the propor- 
tions of the Grecian architecture — which the French have gene- 
rally made their models, are certain at the very first view to 
strike, to please, and to elevate ; while the English literature — 
and no portion of it more justly than the one now under our con- 
sideration — may rather be compared to the artful wilderness, the 
studied irregularity of some Gothic cathedral. Its proportions 
are less obvious, its outline less distinct ; its rich and varied orna- 
ments can only be understood, and its multiplicity of parts can 
only be harmonized into a beautiful and accordant whole, by the 
spectator who will pass some time and exert some patience in 
studying it, and whose eye must first overcome the mysterious 
gloom which pervades the solemn fabric. 

But these remarks will be better substantiated by a comparison 
of the great works of theologic eloquence which we are about 
to examine in detail. Those qualities which we have already 
spoken of as characterising all the literary productions of the 
period of Queen Elizabeth will be found impressed upon no part 
of that literature with greater distinctness than upon this. Rich- 
ness, fertility, universality are stamped upon all the writings of 
this unequalled era; and richness, fertility, and universality are 
the distinctive features of the style of the three great divines 
whom we have selected from a very large multitude as embodying 
in the highest degree the peculiar merits of their era — an era 
which, it is proper to remark, extended from the middle of Eliza- 
beth's reign down to the period of the Restoration, and even 
some time beyond it. 

The innumerable discordant sects into which the nation was 
split during the Commonwealth were much more calculated to 
encourage wild speculations in doctrine and fantastical innova- 
tions in practice than to promote the true interests of religion ; 
and, with that narrow and persecuting bigotry which so strongly 
contrasted with their professions of universal toleration, the fana- 
tics united all their efibrts against the established Church of the 
country. Bitter as were their enmities towards one another, the 
thousand sects could at least find one point in which they were 
all agreed ; and this was the annihilation of a Church whose 
riches and dignity excited at once their envy and their rapacity, 
while the learning and virtue of its most distinguished defenders 
must have been felt by them — bigots at once and fanatics as they 
were — as a tacit reproach upon their own blatant ignorance and 
plebeian ferocity. 

A multitude of the regular clergy were driven from their pul- 
pits, and persecuted with every ingenuity that triumphant malice 



136 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. CcHAP. VIII. 

could devise : many men, venerable for their virtues and illustrious 
for their learning, were hounded like wild beasts from the tranquil 
retreats of their universities and the industrious obscurity of their 
parishes. The Church of England underwent a fierce and unre- 
lenting ordeal, and, in passing through that fiery trial, showed 
that all the severities of a tyrannical and fanatic government might 
indeed oppress, but could never humiliate it. It was in imprison- 
ment, in exile, and in poverty that that Church strung its nerves 
and strengthened itself for its noblest exploits; it was when 
crushed beneath the armed foot of military fanaticism that it gave 
out, like the fragrant Indian tree, its sweetest odours of sanctity 
and its most precious balm of Christian doctrine; and let it be 
recorded to the glory of these much-tried and illustrious victims, 
that when the storm of tyranny had passed away, and the An- 
glican Church was once more restored to its holy places, it used 
its victory mercifully, as it had supported its affliction patiently. 
It had suffered persecution, and it had learned forgiveness. 

The three great men whose works we propose to examine, 
occupy a period extending between the years 1553 and 1677, or 
rather more than a century — a century filled with vicissitudes of 
the gravest import to the fortunes of the English Church. We 
should not have ventured to take a view of this part of our sub- 
ject embracing so long a period of time, and necessitating the 
consideration of so many, so various, and so important works, 
but from the reflection that these men and their productions bear 
one stamp and possess a singular resemblance in mode of thought 
and tone of language ; they all belong, intellectually if not chrono- 
logically, to the Elizabethan era. 

The first of them in point of time is Richard Hooker, born 
near Exeter in 1553, and enabled, by the wise benevolence of 
the venerable Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, to study at the Uni- 
versity of Oxford, where he speedily distinguished himself for 
his vast learning and industry, no less than by a simplicity and 
purity of character almost angelic. 

Having attracted the notice of Bishop Sandys, he was made 
tutor to that prelate's son, who, together with Cranmer, a descend- 
ant of the archbishop, enjoyed the benefit of Hooker's superin- 
tendence, and who ever afterwards retained for his wise and 
simple preceptor the warmest veneration and respect. After oc- 
cupying for a short time the chair of Deputy Professor of Hebrew, 
he entered into holy orders, and married. This last import- 
ant act of life was productive of so much affliction, even to his 
pious and gentle spirit, and was entered upon with a guileless 
simplicity so characteristic of Hooker's unworldly temper, that 
■we cannot refrain from giving the anecdote as related by his friend 
and biographer Walton. Arriving wet and weary in London, he 



CHAP. VI11.3 hooker: his life. 137 

put up there at a houge set apart for tlie accommodation of llie 
preachers who had to deliver the sermon at Paul's Cross. Ills 
hostess treated him with so much kindness that Hooker's grati- 
tude induced him to accept a proposition made by her of procur- 
ing him a wife. This she accordingly did in the person of her 
own daughter, "a silly clownish woman, and withal a mere Xan- 
tippe,"*'hom he accordingly married, and who appears to have 
inflicted upon her simple and patient husband an uninterrupted 
succession of such penance as ascetics usually exercise upon 
themselves in the hope of recompense in a future existence. 
When visited, at a rectory in Buckinghamshire to which he was 
afterwards presented, by his old pupils Sandys and Cranmer, 
Hooker was found in the fields tending sheep and reading Flo- 
race, possibly contrasting the sweet pictures of rural life painted 
by the Venusian bard with the vulgar realities which surrounded 
him. On returning to the house the guests " received little enter- 
tainment except from the conversation of Hooker," who was 
disturbed by his wife's calling him away to rock the cradle. On 
their departure the next morning Cranmer could not refrain from 
expressing his sympatiiy with Hooker's domestic miseries, with 
his poverty and the obscurity of his condition. "My dear 
George," replied this Christian philosopher, "if saints have 
usually a double share in the miseries of this life, I, that am none, 
ought not to repine at what my wise Creator hath appointed for 
me, but labour (as indeed I do daily) to submit mine to his will, 
and possess my soul in patience and peace." Shortly after tlie 
event related in this touching anecdote, Hooker received the digni- 
fied appointment of Master of the Temple in London, a post in 
wliich his learning, genius, and piety were exhibited in all their 
brightness, but in which his resignation and love of peace were 
put to a trial not less severe, though certainly less humiliating, tliaii 
those to which this heavenly-minded man was exposed in his 
Buckingliamshire rectory. He soon found himself engaged in a 
controversy with Walter Travers, his colleague in the ministry 
of the Temple, an eloquent and able man, but professing cer- 
tain opinions respecting church government with which Hooker 
could not coincide. In this interminable sea of discussion was 
now conscientiously embarked the mild and modest Hooker: and 
though the argument was conducted on both sides with good tem- 
per and courtesy, it embittered the existence of our peace-loving 
divine, and ended in his antagonist being suspended from his 
ministerial functions by the authority of Archbishop Whilgilt. 
Hooker on this occasion wrote to the prelate a letter, imploring 
deliverance from "that troubled sea of noises and harsh discon- 
tents," an element so unfitted to tlie peculiar character of his mind 
and temper, and a position which prevented liim from proceeding 

12- 



138 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. VIII. 

Avith the great work lie was now meditating, his ' Treatise on the 
Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.' The letter breathes so noble a 
spirit of Christian purity, and is withal so characteristic of the 
man, that we shall, we trust, be pardoned for inserting some pas- 
sages of it; the rather as it contains the outline and general aim 
of the work itself. 

"My Lord, — When I lost the freedom of my cell, which was 
my college, yet I found some degree of it in my quiet country 
parsonage. But I am weary of the noise and oppositions of this 
place; and, indeed, God and nature did not intend me for conten- 
tions, but for study and quietness. And, my Lord, my particular 
contests here with Mr. Travers have proved the more unpleasant 
to me because I believe him to be a good man ; and upon that 
belief hath occasioned me to examine my conscience touching his 
opinions. And to satisfy that, I have consulted the Holy Scrip- 
tures and other laws both human and divine And in 

this examination I have not only satisfied myself, but have begun 
a treatise, in which I intend the satisfaction of others, by a demon- 
stration of the reasonableness of our laws of ecclesiastical polity. 
But, my Lord, I shall never be able to finish what I have begun, 
unless I be removed into some quiet parsonage, rvhere. I may see 
GocVs blessings spring out of my jnother earth, and eat my 
bread in peace and privacy ; a place wliere I may, without dis- 
turbance, meditate my approaching mortality, and that great ac- 
count which all flesh must give at the last day to the God of all 
spirits." 

His wise and moderate desire was granted ; he was transferred, 
in 1591, to the rectory of Boscomb, in VVihshire, where he finished 
the first four books of his treatise, which were printed in 1594. 
He was in the following year presented, by Queen Elizabeth, to the 
rectory of Bishop's Bourne, in Kent, whither he removed, and 
where he spent, in learned retirement and in the faithful discharge 
of his pastoral duties, the short remainder of his life. Here he 
completed the fifth book of his great work, published in 1597, and 
also prepared three others, which did not appear till after his 
death. This event took place in November, 1600; and it is dif- 
ficult to conceive any human soul, purified by suliering, elevated 
by the most vigorous yet meekest intellect, adorned by learning, 
and inspired by piety, passing through our mortal life with less 
of stain, and rising into a more glorious existence with less need 
of cliange and purifying, than the angelic spirit of the mild and 
venerable Hooker, 

'"Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity,'" says the excellent and 
acute historian of the literature of Europe, "might seem to fall 
under the head of theology; but, the first book of this work being 
by much the best, Hooker ought ratlier to be reckoiied among 



CHAP. VIII. 1 hooker: ecclesiastical polity. 139 

those who have weiglied the principles, and delineated the boun- 
daries, of moral and political science." No quality is more surely 
a concomitant of the highest order of genius than its suggestive- 
ness, and what we may call its expansive character. Though 
originally written to determine a particular and limited controversy 
on certain matters of church discipline. Hooker's immortal treatise 
is a vast arsenal or storehouse of all those proofs and arguments 
upon which rests the whole structure of the moral and political 
edifice. "The first lays open," says D'Israeli, " the foundations 
of law and order, to escape from 'the mother of confusion, which 
breedeth destruction,'" Unhappily, however, this great work 
is incomplete ; or at least so much mystery rests upon its publi- 
cation, that it is impossible to divest the mind of the most fatal 
of all suspicions which can affect a book — suspicions as to its 
genuineness. At the death of Hooker his manuscripts fell into 
the hands of his despicable wife, who, marrying indecently soon 
after the loss of the good man whose constant penance she had 
been, at first refused to give any account of the precious literary- 
remains of her deceased husband. It afterwards appeared that 
she had allowed various Puritan ministers (men professing the 
very opinions which Hooker had written to refute) to have free 
access to these papers ; and it is to their sacrilegious tampering 
that we ought doubtless to attribute not only the destruction of 
many of these papers, but also alterations which have apparently 
been made in the text. The wretched woman, who had thus 
betrayed the glory of her departed husband, was found dead in 
her bed the day after she had been forced to make this humili- 
ating confession. The precious manuscripts now passed through 
several hands, and an edition of the five books of the * Ecclesias- 
tical Polity' was published in 1617. " Again, in 1632," continues 
D'Israeli, who has given us the secret history of Hooker's great 
work, "the five undoubted genuine books were reprinted. But 
their fate and their perils had not yet terminated." At the troubled 
period of the Long Parliament Hooker's manuscripts were again 
examined by order of the House of Commons, and the sixth and 
eighth books were given to the world. It is singular that in this, 
as well as in subsequent editions, the seventh book is not included ; 
and doubts were even raised as to the genuineness of that book 
when restored byDr. Gauden in his edition of the work. It is, 
however, now generally admitted that that seventh book, though 
hastily composed, is really genuine; but we must, on the other 
hand, content ourselves with the mortifying conclusion that the 
so-called sixth book is irrecoverably lost ; that which occupies 
its place being a separate treatise, never intended to form part of 
the 'Ecclesiastical Polity.' In spite, however, of the loss of an 
important portion of its argument, in spile of the numerous and 



140 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. VIII. 

often contradictory passages which have been interpolated by un- 
faithful copyists and disingenuous commentators, the 'Ecclesias- 
tical Polity' will ever remain one of the noblest ornaments of 
English literature, and one of the mightiest triumphs of human 
genius and industry. "He had drunk," says Hallam, "at the 
streams of ancient philosophy, and acquired from Plato and Tully 
somewhat of their redundancy and want of precision, with their 
comprehensiveness of observation and their dignity of soul." 
When a portion of Hooker's preface was translated by an English 
Romanist to the Pope, his Holiness expressed the greatest sur- 
prise at the erudition and acuteness of the book. " There is no 
learning that this man has not searched into," said the Pontiff; 
"nothing too hard for his understanding, and his books will get 
reverence by age." James I. of England, a prince to whom we 
cannot deny the possession of most extensive learning, inquiring 
after Hooker, and hearing that his recent death had been deeply 
lamenled by the Queen, paid the following tribute to his genius : 
— "And I receive it with no less sorrow; for I have received more 
satisfaction (that is, conviction) in reading a leaf of Mr. Hooker 
than I had in large treatises by many of the learned : many others 
write well, but yet in the next age they will be forgotten." 
Hooker's style, though full of vigorous and idiomatic expressions, 
is much more Latin and artificial than was usual at that time: he 
does not disfigure his sentences with that vain parade of quotation 
which distinguishes contemporary writings : his profound learning 
was, if we may use the expression, chemically and not mechani- 
cally united with his mind; it was incorporated not by contact, 
but by solution. Though the general tone of the work is of course 
abstract and even dry, the sweet and simple character of the man 
sometimes makes itself perceptible through the elaborate and 
brilliant panoply of the orator; or, to use the beautiful words of 
D'lsraeli, " Hooker is the first vernacular writer whose classical 
pen harmonised a numerous prose. While his earnest eloquence, 
freed from all scholastic pedantry, assumes a style stately in its 
structure, his gentle spirit sometimes flows into natural humour, 
lovely in the freshness of its simplicity." 

In purity and meekness of personal character, in immensity of 
erudition, and in power of eloquence, there is a strong resem- 
blance between the great writer of whom we have just feebly 
attempted to give a sketch, and the sweet orator to whom we 
are about to turn our attention — Jeremy Taylor. They were 
both stamped with the majestic impress of that nol)le age of our 
literature, when the minds of men seemed to possess something of 
the simplicity, grandeur, and freshness which we fondly believe 
characterised (at least physically) the primeval races of mankind. 
Taylor's learning, indeed, was hardly less vast and multifarious 



CHAP. VIII.] JEREMY TAYLOR: HIS LIFE. 141 

than that of Hooker; but, whether from the poetical and imagi- 
native turn of his mind, or from the greater temptations offered 
by the more declamatory nature of the subjects of his writings, his 
erudition appears less under liis command than Hooker's. The 
latter may be compared to the Roman warrior, whose arms indeed 
were weighty, but not so much so as to impair his agility and his 
strength in the combat; while Taylor reminds us rather of the 
knight of the Middle Ages, sheathed from plume to spur in pon- 
derous and shining panoply, but his armour is too complicated in 
its parts to admit of free motion, and the very plumes, and scarfs, 
and penoncelles which adorn it, are an impediment, no less than a 
decoration. We find, in short, in the writings of Taylor something ' 
of that diffuse, sensuous, and effeminate over-richness which distin- 
guishes the style of many of the Greek and Roman Fathers — Ter- 
tullian, for instance, or Chrysostom. But in spite of these defects, 
we cannot conceal our conviction that the works of Jeremy Taylor 
are, upon the whole, the finest production of English ecclesiastical 
literature; or, to use the strong but hardly exaggerated language of 
Parr, "they are fraught with guileless ardour, with peerless elo- 
quence, and with the richest stores of knowledge, historical, clas- 
sical, scholastic, and theological." 

He was born, in tlie humblest rank of life (his father was a 
barber at Cambridge), in the year 1613, and entered Caius Col- 
lege, in that university, in his thirteenth year. On taking his 
bachelor's degree in 1631 he entered into holy orders, and made 
his first step in the career of ecclesiastical advancement by 
preaching, for a friend, in St. Paul's Cathedral in London. Here 
his eloquence, his learning, and what a contemporary calls "his 
florid and youthful beauty and pleasant air," procured him im- 
mediate reputation, and the notice of Archbishop Laud, who 
made him his chaplain, gave him preferment in the Church, and 
presented him to a fellowship in All Souls' College, Oxford. He 
married, in 1639, Phoebe Langdale, by whom he had three sons, 
all of whom he had the misfortune to survive. But this prosper- 
ous and peaceful existence was now overshadowed by the clouds 
of that tremendous storm which was soon to burst upon England, 
and in its fury not only to sweep away the altar and the throne, but 
almost to eflace the very foundations of society. At the breaking 
out of the civil war Taylor sided warmly with the royalist party, 
and even wrote a defence of episcopacy. In the troubles which 
followed he was taken prisoner by the parliamentary army in the 
battle fought under the walls of Cardigan Castle. The royalist 
cause now met with a long succession of reverses ; and Taylor, 
who had been released by the victorious party, determined to 
retire altoijelher from what he probably foresaw was a hopeless 
struggle, and one in which an ecclesiastic could hardly hope to 



142 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. VIII. 

mingle with much utility to his party or much honour to his pro- 
fessional character. He retired to Wales, and established a school 
at Newton Hall, in Carmarthenshire, where he remained in tran- 
quillity, without incurring any very violent or persevering perse- 
cution at the hands of the dominant party. His own account of 
this portion of his life is interesting and beautiful. "In the great 
storm which dashed the vessel of the Church all in pieces 1-had 
been cast on the coast of Wales; and, in a little boat, thought to 
have enjoyed that rest and quietness which in England, in a far 
greater, I could not hope for. * Here I cast anchor, and, thinking 
to ride safely, the storm followed me with so impetuous violence, 
that it broke a cable, and I lost my anchor. And here again I 
was exposed to the mercy of the sea, and the gentleness of an 
element that could neither distinguish things nor persons ; and, 
but that He that stilleth the raging of the sea, and the noise of 
the waves, and the madness of his people, had provided a plank for 
me, I had been lost to all opportunities of content and study ; but I 
know not whether I have been more preserved by the courtesies 
of my friends or the gentleness and mercies of a noble enemy." 

The passage just quoted is taken from Taylor's dedication to 
the ' Liberty of Prophesying,' his first work of a universal and 
permanent importance. The object of this admirable production 
is " to show the Unreasonableness of Prescribing to other men's 
Faith, and the Iniquity of Persecuting Differing Opinions." It 
is, in fact, the first complete and powerful vindication that the 
world had ever seen of the great principle of religious toleration. 
Proud, indeed, may England justly be in the reflection that it was 
she who first gave to the world the noble birth of Religious and 
Civil Liberty — those twin-sisters, eternal and inseparable, the fairest 
and strongest children of Heaven. With the line of argument taken 
by Taylor in this production we have nothing to do at present: 
viewed as a mere work of literature, it is distinguished by all the 
excellences which mark his style, though at the same time it is 
more argumentative and less declamatory than his other writings. 

His wife having died three years after her marriage, in 1642, 
Taylor contracted a second alliance during his residence in Wales. 
His second wife was Mrs. Joanna Bridges, said to have been a 
natural daughter of Charles!., a lady possessed of a considerable 
estate in Carmarthenshire. Thougli thus relieved from the neces- 
sity of continuing to be a schoolmaster, he appears at different 
times to have suffered serious losses by fines and sequestrations, 
and even to have been imprisoned on one occasion, if not more, 
for having too freely expressed his sentiments on public and church 
affairs. His literary activity, however, did not for a moment 
relax, and will' be best proved by the enumeration of some of his 
principal works : — ' An Apology for authorised and set Forms of 



CHAP. VIII.] JEREMY TAYLOR: HIS M^ORKS. 143 

Liturgy ;' ' The Life of Christ the Great Exemplar,' published 
in 1648; ' The Rule and Exercise of Holy Living,' and ' The 
Rule and Exercise of Holy Dying,' two admirable treatises of 
Christian conduct, which, like the last-named work, have taken a 
permanent place in the religious literature of the English Church. 
Besides these, and a great number of sermons, he wrote ' Golden 
Grove,' a small but admirable manual of devotion, so named after 
the seat of his friend and neighbour the Earl of Carbery ; and a 
treatise on the subject of Original Sin, which involved him in a 
controversy with the Calvinists on the one hand, and the High 
Church party on the other. This is the only occasion on which 
Taylor's courtesy and gentleness of character appear to have at 
all deserted him. The Restoration was now at hand, when the 
long-oppressed Church might look forward to tranquillity and 
peace, and when the devoted adherents of the monarchy and the 
constitution might reasonably expect some reward for their sacri- 
fices and their fidelity. 

Their hopes, however, were cruelly disappointed : the profli- 
gate monarch forgot, in his moment of prosperity, all the lessons 
which exile and distress might have taught even the most insen- 
sible ; and it is satisfactory to think that one exception was made 
to the melancholy uniformity of ingratitude, and that one pious 
and apostolic clergyman was rewarded for his sufferings and for 
his virtues. Taylor was made Bishop of Down and Connor, to 
which see was afterwards annexed that of Dromore, also in Ire- 
land. These well-won and nobly-worn dignities Taylor did not 
long enjoy, for he died of a fever at Lisburn, in Ireland, on the 
13th of August, 1667, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. 

His character was truly apostolic, and his was one of those 
rare and excellent natures which appear equally venerable in 
prosperity and in adversity ; the one not able to swell him with 
pride, nor the other to humiliate the simple grandeur of his soul. 

" The sermons of Jeremy Taylor are far above any that had 
preceded them in the English Church. An imagination essen- 
tially poetical, and sparing none of the decorations which, by 
critical rules, are deemed almost peculiar to verse ; a warm tone 
of piety, sweetness, and charity; an accumulation of circum- 
stantial accessories whenever he reasons, or persuades, or de- 
scribes ; an erudition pouring itself forth in quotation, till his ser- 
mons become in some places almost a garland of flowers from all 
other writers, and especially those of classical antiquity, never 
before so redundandy scattered from the pulpit — distinguish 
Taylor from his contemporaries by their degree, as they do from 
most of his successors by their kind. His sermons on the Mar- 
riage Ring, on the House of Feasting, on the Apples of Sodom, 
may be named, without disparagement to others which perhaps 



144 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. (^CHAP. VIII. 

ought to stand in equal place. But they are not without con- 
siderable faults. The eloquence of Taylor is great, but it is not 
eloquence of the highest class ; it is far too Asiatic, too much in 
the style of Chrysostom and other declaimers of the fourth cen- 
tury, by the study of whom he had probably vitiated his taste; 
his learning is ill placed, and his arguments often as much so — 
not to mention that he lias the common defect of alleging nuga- 
tory proofs : his vehemence loses its efiect by the circuity of his 
pleonastic language ; his sentences are of endless length, and 
hence not only altogether unmusical, but not always reducible to 
grammar. But he is still the greatest ornament of the English 
pulpit up to the middle of the seventeenth century ; and we have 
no reason to believe, or rather much reason to disbelieve, that he 
had any competitor in other languages." 

There can be very little doubt of the general justice of the 
above criticism; and as the passage is calculated to give, as far as 
it goes, a faithful idea of the peculiarities — and particularly of the 
faults — of Jeremy Taylor's prose style, we have not scrupled to 
quote it here: we canjiot, however, do so without remarking on 
what, to us at least, appears to be a defect in the general judg- 
ments of the excellent author from whose work we have ex- 
tracted it. 

No one can deny Hallam the praise of perfect acquaintance 
with the vast subject he has so ably illustrated, of a store of learn- 
ing equally accurate and profound, and of a singularly clear and 
lucid style: but at the same time he will be generally found, wc 
think, to have been barely just to the English literature of the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Whether from the peculiar 
bent of his personal tastes, from the particular direction of his 
reading, or from the habit of periodical criticism, the discriminat- 
ing faculty in his powerful mind appears to have been developed 
disproportionately with, nay, even perhaps at the expense of, the 
admiring or appreciating power; in other words, he exhibits a 
strong and possibly involuntary tendency to prefer what is conso- 
nant with a pure and regular system of rules to that which bears 
the stamp of vigorous and possibly irregular originality. His 
mind delights rather in what is negatively than in what is posi- 
tively beautiful. Without enthusiasm, criticism becomes rather 
a dogmatic art than an ennobling and productive science; and 
Hallam will appear, in doing ample justice to the more regular 
and colder schools of literature in Europe, to have hardly been 
sufficiently warm in his praise of the great writers of this, the 
boldest and most impassioned period of his country's intellectual 
history. In our opinion, the richness, the inexhaustible fertility, 
the exquisite and subtle harmony, and the fervent and yet gentle 
piety which distinguish every page of Jeremy Taylor's writings, 



CHAP. VIII.] JEREMY TAYLOR : HIS STYLE. 146 

nay, the mere abundance of new ideas, and particularly the mul- 
titude of images drawn by him from the common objects and 
phenomena of nature, would of themselves be more than sufficient 
to place this great poet — for a poet he was, in the highest sense 
of the term — at least on an equality with any orator of the so- 
called classical school of French pulpit eloquence. 

In the peculiarity to which we have just alluded, he is indeed 
Shakspearian ; few prose authors in the English language, and 
certainly none in any other, having surpassed Taylor in the num- 
ber, the beauty, or the novelty of images drawn from rural life, 
from the lovely or sublime objects of nature, from the graces of 
infancy and the tenderest endearments of affection — those images, 
in short, which- we never meet without a gentle flush and thrill 
of the heart ; for they are echoes and emanations from a purer, 
a more innocent, and a happier existence. 

In one respect, indeed, there exists a resemblance between 
Taylor and Shakspeare so striking as hardly to have escaped any 
one who has studied the literary physiognomy of this wonder- 
ful epoch ; we allude to that exulting and abounding richness of 
fancy which causes them to be lured away at every turn from 
the principal aim of their reasoning by the bright phantoms which 
perpetually arise during its pursuit. As, in a country richly 
stocked with game, the hounds are perpetually drawn off from 
their chase by the fresh quarry they have started as they run, the 
minds of these writers seem incapable of resisting the temptation 
of turning aside to hunt the fancies started by their restless ima- 
gination. This is, it is true, often a defect, and sometimes pro- 
duces confusion, and injures the very effect of the author's rea- 
soning ; few readers are able to follow the irregular movements 
of the poet's inconstant and suggestive imagination ; to do that 
would imply a vivacity of perception resembling the creative 
energy of the poet himself. This discursive character is indeed 
perceptible in almost all the writings of this gigantic era — in those 
of Bacon no less than in those of Shakspeare ; it is essentially 
the peculiarity of a highly creative age ; and though, after ac- 
companying the poet or orator through the long and varied maze 
of his discursive wanderings, we may occasionally find that we 
have travelled far from the direct road of argument, we ought to 
be grateful for the many diversified and lovely views he has shown 
us in the journey, and for the fresh and fragrant flowers which he 
has plucked for us as we wandered. 

" We will venture to assert," says a critic who has written of 
this period of our literature with a warmth of enthusiasm that 
renders his judgment more genial, and therefore in our opinion 
more just, than the colder and more cautious approbation of 
Hallam — " we will venture to assert that there is in any one of 
13 



146 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. CcHAP. VIII. 

the prose folios of Jeremy Taylor more fine fancy and original 
imagery — more brilliant conceptions and glowing expressions — 
more new figures and new applications of old figures — more in 
short of the body and the soul of poetry, than in all the odes and 
the epics that have since been produced in Europe. There are 
large portions of Barrow, and Hooker, and Bacon, of which we 
may say nearly as much : nor can any one have a tolerable idea 
of the riches of our language and our native genius who has not 
made himself acquainted with the prose-writers as well as the 
poets of this memorable period." 

The three great names which we have selected to form the sub- 
ject of the present chapter have been chosen from difl'erent though 
successive periods in the history of the Anglican Church, in order 
that the reader might remark in what peculiarities tliey differ, and 
in what they resemble one another ; and thus that some notion 
might be formed as to the points of similitude or difference exist- 
ing in the epochs of which they are the representatives. In 
Hooker we have seen the legislative, in Taylor the oratorical fea- 
ture of religious writing most strongly developed; in Barrow we 
shall remark the deliberative species of eloquence existing in the 
highest force. If the first of these great men has dug deep into 
the eternal rock on which is founded the whole edifice of human 
society, in search of materials with which to build up the frame of 
ecclesiastical polity ; if the second, by a sweet and abundant elo- 
quence, has made religion lovely and amiable in our eyes, hang- 
ing on the altar of God the freshest garlands of fancy and imagi- 
nation, and dedicating the rich products of intellect and poetry to 
the service of that Being whose most precious gifts they are, even 
as Abel olTered up to the Lord the firstlings of his flock ; we shall 
find that the third in this illustrious triad of great theologians 
did not fall short of his predecessors, either in the value of the 
gifts which he brought as tribute to the same altar, or in the fer- 
vency and purity of his ministration. There is a very strong 
resemblance between the characters of Barrow and of Pascal. 
A comparison, it is true, between the respective styles of these 
two writers would be in some measure an injury to the immortal 
author of the ' Provincial Letters ;' for Barrow's writings, vigour- 
ous and even admirable as they undoubtedly are, hardly exhibit 
that wonderful condensation and originality which make every 
line of Pascal appeal so irresistibly and so instantaneously to the 
highest powers of our intellect, and make us pause and meditate 
as each new expression seems to open to us a long vista of de- 
ductions, or suggests to us a vast and complex train of reason- 
ing. Nor indeed is the style of Barrow remarkable, in so high 
a degree at least, for the frequent occurrence of those admirable 
expressions so abundant in every page of the great French theo- 



CHAP. VIII. 3 BARROW ; HIS CAREER. 147 

logian ; expressions at once simple and profound, intensely idi- 
omatic, yet perfectly new. Yet if we look for a manly and fervid 
eloquence, for a mighty and sustained power kept under control 
by the severest logic, for a peculiar quality of mastery and vigour 
to which all tasks appear equally easy, we may point with pride 
to the writings of Barrow. "He is equally distinguished," says 
an acute and able critic, "for the redundancy of his matter, and 
for the pregnant brevity of his expression ; but what more parti- 
cularly characterises his manner is a certain air of powerl'ul and 
of conscious facility in the execution of whatever he undertakes. 
Whether the subject be mathematical, metaphysical, or theological, 
he seems always to bring to it a mind which feels itself superior 
to the occasion, and which, in contending with the greatest diffi- 
culties, 'puts forth but half its strength.'" 

Like Pascal, Barrow was one of the greatest physical philoso- 
phers of his own, or indeed of any age; he was tlie friend and the 
preceptor of Newton, and a fellow-labourer with the most illus- 
trious of modern investigators in many fields of natural science, 
particularly in the departments of optics and astronomy. He 
thus brought to the task of demonstrating the nature and neces- 
sity of our Christian duties, and of inculcating the precepts of 
evangelic morality, a mind trained in the investigation of abstract 
truth, and a severe and majestic eloquence, the hanchnaid of the 
strictest and most comprehensive logic. He was a man of vast 
and multifarious attainments, as a very brief sketch of his life will 
sufficiently prove. Born in London, in 1030, of humble though 
not indigent parentage, he early entered, at Cambridge, on that 
career which ultimately rendered his name one of tlie brightest 
ornaments of that university. Finding that the religious dissen- 
sions of the period of the Commonwealth, and particularly the 
predominance during that period of opinions totally at variance 
with his own, precluded any hope of success in the clerical pro- 
fession, he turned his attention to medicine, and cultivated with 
ardour many of the sciences which are subservient to that pursuit, 
as anatomy, botany, and chemistry. Nor did he neglect the 
studies which we should consider more peculiarly congenial to the 
venerable walls of his " Alma Mater;" he became a candidate for 
the professorship of Greek in 1655, but, failing in his attempt to 
obtain that dignity, he went abroad, and passed some years in the 
East, and particularly at Smyrna and Constantinople. Return- 
ing to England in 1659, Barrow obtained the professorship for 
which he had been before an unsuccessful candidate, and to this 
post were added several others, of less dignity indeed, but suffi- 
ciendy proving the high reputation enjoyed by Barrow in many 
diflerent and dissimilar departments of knowledge. In 1663 he 
resigned these appointments for that of Lucasian professor of ma- 



148 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. IX. 

ihematics in the university, a post whicli he filled with increasing 
glory for six years, at the end of which period he vacated it in 
favour of liis immortal contemporary, Newton. His rise to public 
distinction was now steady and rapid : he was successively ap- 
pointed one of the king's chaplains; nominated, in 1672, Master 
of his college — that of Trinity, which thus possessed within its 
bosom at one time two of the greatest and most virtuous men who 
ever dignified humanity — the king paying Barrow, as he conferred 
upon him this deserved honour, the just compliment of saying 
that he had bestowed it "on the best scholar in England;" and 
lastly he was elected, in 1675, Vice-Chancellor of the university, 
which dignity he enjoyed only two years, as he died of a fever in 
1677, at the age of forty-six. 

Barrow is an admirable specimen of a class of men who, fortu- 
nately for the political, the literary, and the theological glory of 
England, have adorned her two great seats of learning, Oxford 
and Cambridge, at almost every period of her history. Possessed 
of vast, solid, and diversified learning, with practice and experi- 
ence in the affairs of real life corrected and rendered philosophi- 
cal by retirement and meditation, with the intense and concen- 
trated industry of the monk guided by the sense of utility of the 
man of the world, these rigorous scholars seem peculiarly adapted 
by Providence to become firm and majestic pillars of such an 
ecclesiastical establishment as the Church of England. "Blessed 
is she," — we may venture to apply the words of Scripture, — " for 
she has her quiver full of them !" 



CHAPTER IX. 



JOHN MILTON. 



Character of the Poet — Religious and Political Opinions — Republicanism — His 
Learning — Travels in Italy — Prose Works — Areopagitica — Prose Style — Trea- 
tises on Divorce — His Literary Meditations — Tractate of Education — Passion 
for Music — Paradise Lost — Dante and Milton compared — Study of Romance — 
Campbell's Criticism — Paradise Regained — Minor Poems — Samson Agonistes. 

Milton says, in one of the most admirable and characteristic 
of his prose works, that a poet should be in his own life and 
person a " true poem — that is, a composition of the best and 
noblest things ;" and whatever discrepancy we may find between 
the works and the characters of inferior writers, we shall never 
fail to remark, in the case of that small number consisting of the 



CHAP. IX. 3 CHARACTER OF THE POET. 149 

very greatest names in the history of the human mind, a certain, 
perfect, and wonderful accordance between the character of the 
man and the peculiar excellences of his productions. ' Of the 
four great Evangelists of the human mind. Homer, Virgil, Dante, 
and Milton, each is in some measure, personally as well as intel- 
lectually, the type and reflection of the epoch in which he lived ; 
and, as the appearance of these great luminaries of man's spiritual 
horizon was coincident with great events affecting the social des- 
tinies of our race, we may even say that these sublime minds at 
once guided and followed the direction of the opinions and con- 
dition of their times. 

Homer is, in fact, a short expression for the heroic or mythic 
epoch, taken in its sublimer and more lovely manifestation ; Vir- 
gil is the incarnation of the power, grandeur, and development 
of the nationality of empire; Dante was no less the literary 
embodiment of mediaeval Christianity — that wild and wondrous 
phase of humanity which is found petrified, as it were, and pre- 
sented to us in a tangible form, in the great triumphs of Gothic 
art; and our great countryman will seem no unapt or imperfect 
type of the Christianity of the Reformation — that is, of Christi- 
anity combined with freedom of opinion and the right of private 
judgment carried to its extremes! consequences. 

Wonderful, indeed, and complicated as is the combination of 
causes and conditions which must conspire to the production of 
any work of permanent and universal importance, aild to the 
existence, consequently, of a mind capable of creating such a 
work, in no case in the whole history of mankind does that 
combination appear to have been so wonderful as in the example 
of Milton. Born in an age when the great advance of civiliza- 
tion appeared to preclude the possibility of any great work ap- 
pearing to rival the immortal monuments of ancient literature, 
and when men despaired — as they always have done — of a great 
epic being ever again given to the world — as if the fountains of 
the beautiful were not inexhaustible as the rivers of Paradise — he 
appears to have had a vast and all-embracing sympathy with 
whatever was ennobling in the opinions of his times. His mind 
was profoundly and wonderfully eclectic. His political and re- 
ligious sentiments were of the extremest and even most violent 
character; he was a devoted republican, with his grand imagi- 
nation ever dwelling upon the visionary phantoms of antique 
glory and virtue. In the earthquake which overthrew the regal 
and hierarchic institutions of his country, his unworldly and he- 
roic soul saw only a beneficent and temporary convulsion, clear- 
ing the ground of its load of false temples, and preparing it for 
the erection of a new and glorious social edifice, with something 

13* 



150 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. IX, 

of the pure proportions of the Roman Capitol or of the Attic 
Acropolis. 

In religion, too, his haughty intellect and pure morals revolted 
at that admixture of human motives without which, like the 
baser alloy in metallurgy, the pure gold of Christianity can hardly 
be formed — at least as society was now constituted — into a prac- 
tically useful instrument for the improvement of humanity ; and 
he hoped that, by forcibly bringing back the Church to the struc- 
tural simplicity of the primitive limes, he would restore the pure, 
ardent, and evangelic spirit which characterised those ages. And 
perhaps, in a world peopled by Miltons and by Harringtons, 
such schemes and hopes might cease to be Utopian. Visionary 
as they were, these convictions gave a peculiar character of ele- 
vation to Milton's meditations ; and it is not too much to say that, 
had his opinions on government in church and state been other 
than they were, we could have possessed neither the 'Areopagi- 
tica' nor the 'Paradise Lost' — 

" And Heaven had wanted one immortal song." 

But the profession of these opinions, and the fierce zeal with 
which he advocated them, could not efface in such a mind as 
Milton's the impressions made by mediseval art and by the chival- 
rous history of his country. And thus there appears continually 
in his works, we will not say a contest, but a contrast, between 
liis convictions and his sympathies — between his logic and his 
fancy. And this, which in an inferior mind would not have failed 
to produce an incessant uncertainty and inconsistency, in such a 
soul as John Milton's was a healthy and vivifying action : it was 
like the conllicting currents of tiie galvanic battery, whose oppos- 
ing poles give out intensest light and heat. Thus, while Milton 
the polemic was advocating the overthrow of the monarchic in- 
stitutions of England, and the destruction of the hierarchic edifice 
of its Church, Milton the poet had his soul deeply penetrated 
with the enthusiasm inspired by his country's history, and his 
ear ever thrilling to the majestic services of its half-Roman wor- 
ship. The man who desired the abolition of all external digni- 
ties on earth has given us the grandest picture of such a graduated 
hierarcliy of orders in heaven — 

" Thrones, Princedoms, Virtues, Dominations, Powers." 

He who would have reduced the externals of Christianity to a 
simplicity and meanness compared with which the subterranean 
worship of the persecuted Christians of the primitive times was 
splendour, has exhibited a deeper and more prevailing admiration 
than any other poet ever showed for the grandeur of Gothic 
architecture and the charms of the solemn masses of the ancient 
cathedrals : — 



CHAP. IX.] Milton's learning. 151 

" But let my due feet never fail 
To walk the studious cloisters pale ; 
And love the high einbovved roof, 
With antic pillars massy proof, 
And storied windows richly dight, 
Casting a dim religious light: 
There let the pealing organ blow 
To the full-voiced quire below, 
In service high and anthems clear, 
As may with sweetness, through mine ear, 
Dissolve me into ecstasies. 
And bring all heaven before mine eyes." 

In the same way, the learning of this wondrous being helped 
to give his mind that catholicity of taste which is above all things 
necessary to the production of an immortal work. His favourite 
reading, it is true, lay chiefly among the sages and tragic poets of 
ancient Greece : he loved to wander through " the shady spaces 
of philosophy," as he beautifully calls them, with his beloved 
Plato, to follow the soaring of Aristotle's eagle intellect, to listen 
to the chime of Homer's oceanic harmony, and to the more 
irregular music of Pindar, or "sad Electra's poet." But all this 
never deadened his ear, or impaired his sensibility, for the wilder 
poesy of the chivalric age, nor for the more feminine and artificial 
graces of the Italian Muse. He was perhaps the most learned 
man who ever lived, and at the same time the man who had his 
learning the most completely under his command. Like Rabelais, 
Milton may without exaggeration be said to have traversed every 
region in the world of knowledge explored down to his age ; but 
at the same time we must not forget the immense difference, not 
only in point of extent, but in point also of kind, existing between 
the state of human knowledge in the fifteenth and the seventeenth 
centuries. The first of these two wonderful men was the type 
of the infancy of the Reformation, tlie second the embodiment of 
its manhood. Milton enjoyed the rare advantage of a purely 
literary education. The intellect and aptitude for study exhibited 
by him in his earliest childhood seem to have sealed him — even 
as the child Samson was set apart from his birth to the ministry 
— to the services of poesy and learning. Though educated in 
part in the university of Cambridge, he did not remain long 
enough within its venerable walls to acquire any particular direc- 
tion of thought which might liave fettered the development of so 
mighty an intellect ; but only long enough to fill his mind with all 
that is most solid and ennobling in ancient literature and in ab- 
stract science. The care with which he has preserved even the 
most trivial productions of his college career, his Latin verses and 
his fragments of academic comedies, and the tone of serious pride 
with which he speaks of his own youthfid studies, prove to us 
what store he set upon the scholastic occupations of his youth; 



152 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. []cHAP. IX. 

and it behoves us to remember that what in meaner men would 
appear vanity, in Milton must be attributed to a sense of the im- 
portance of what in ordinary cases is little more than an unpro- 
ductive and boyish accomplishment. On leaving the university, 
where his political and religious opinions rendered his longer 
residence disagreeable, if not impossible, the youthful Milton — 
already a prodigy of learning, with his mental graces fitly en- 
shrined in a form distinguished for that pure and seraphic beauty 
which his person retained through life, and which is conspicuous 
in all the portraits of him — travelled over a considerable portion of 
Europe, and was received with particular distinction in Italy. It 
■was here that he became personally acquainted with one of the 
greatest of his contemporaries, "the starry Galileo, with his 
woes," whom he saw, as he describes, " now grown old, a pri- 
soner in the Inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than 
as his Franciscan and Dominican censurers would have him." 
How interesting is it to picture such a meeting as that of Milton 
and Galileo ! Lofty, we may be sure, and sublime was their 
conversation, and these interviews could not fail to add new in- 
tensity to Milton's fervent zeal for liberty of thought. In Italy, 
too, the poet received great encomiums for his proficiency in the 
language of the country, a language in which some of his youthful 
poems are composed; and these — as we have been assured by an 
Italian — are hardly to be detected as the work of a foreigner, and 
are, indeed, scarcely inferior to the compositions of contemporary 
Italian writers. Such encomiums as these, which, as Milton 
himself proudly remarks, " the Italian is not forward to confer on 
those beyond the Alps," helped, undoubtedly, not only to gratify 
his haughty dignity of intellect, but probably tended to fix in his 
mind that preference for Italian literature which is so strongly 
perceptible in his works. It may, indeed, be said that, possessed 
as was his mind, and even saturated, with the spirit of antique 
poetry and philosophy, and intimate as* was his acquaintance with 
the whole circle of dead and living languages, it was the Italian 
literature which left the deepest trace upon his mind, and gave 
the most marked colouring to his writings — particularly to those 
among them which are the more peculiar offspring of his taste. 
As a proof of this, we need only mention some of those among 
his minor pieces which were evidendy the reflection of his per- 
sonal sentiments; the beautiful pastoral elegy entiUed ' L)'cidas,' 
the ' Comus,' and the numerous sonnets which he has left us. 
In all these works he has closely followed not only the spirit, but 
even the forms, of Italian poetry. In the first-mentioned work 
we have a canzone, so exquisitely harmonized, and so full of the 
sweet and elaborate grace of Italian lyric poesy, that the very 
language and music of it has the echo of 



CHAP. IX.] Milton's opinions. 153 

" II bel paese, dove '1 si suona ;" 

?ind it is not too much to say that ' Lycidas ' is an Italian ■poem 
composed in English. In ' Comus,' and the lovely fragment of 
the 'Arcades' — a work in that peculiarly Italian species of com- 
position, the pastoral-romantic drama — he has surpassed Tasso as 
far as Tasso has outstripped Beccari : and as to the sonnet, Mil- 
ton was the first man who grafted upon our more rugged language 
that fairest fruit of the Ausonian Muse. We speak of course par- 
ticularly of that variety — the noblest — of the sonnet, whose tone 
and subject are not exclusively devoted to the passion of love, but 
which have been made a vehicle for the sublimest outbursts of pa- 
triotism and religion — the sonnet, in short, not of Petrarch, but of 
Filicaja. To this list it would be quite necessary to add those 
two exquisite poems, in which the thoughts and the mode of 
treatment are no less Italian than their titles — ' L' Allegro' and ' II 
Penseroso.' 

As Milton was born December 9th, 1608, as he retired from 
the university in 1632, and began to travel in 1638, he was, at the 
time of his sudden return from Italy (having spent only fifteen 
months on the continent), about thirty-one years of age, in the full 
glow and bloom of beauty and accomplishment. It had probably 
been his intention to remain abroad for a much longer period, but 
the breaking out of that furious controversy between the royalist 
and parliamentary parties, which ultimately led to the judicial mur- 
der of a king and the abolition of the regal office, was an event ap- 
pealing far too powerfully to Milton's ardent opinions in religion 
and politics to permit him to remain in a distant country a cool 
spectator of the mighty struggle. In all matters of church and state 
the convictions of the poet were in accordance with the extremest 
doctrines of the republican and Antinomian party. His dream was 
a commonwealth on the model of antiquity, in which purity of man- 
ners and dignity of national character would, as he fondly hoped, 
accompany the simplifying of the structure of the political ma- 
chine ; he imagined, like reformers in all ages, that the destruction 
of a religious hierarchy would necessarily introduce, in the prac- 
tice and discipline of the Christian church, the purity and sim- 
plicity of the primitive times. 

These opinions, probably imbibed, at a very early age, from 
his father (who was himself, in some measure, a sufferer for con- 
science' sake), and still further exaggerated by his own haughty 
spirit, the poet now maintained with astonishing eloquence and 
vehemence in a large portion of his prose works. Though these 
compositions were in most cases written on local and temporary 
subjects, and though the fierce and often sophistical character of 
their argumentation may have contributed to withdraw them from 
the study of the general reader, the prose works of Milton are 



154 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. IX. 

SO strongly characteristic of their illustrious author, and contain 
so many passages of sublimity and beauty, that some acquaint- 
ance with this portion of his writings is indispensable for any 
one desirous of forming a true idea of the intellectual physiog- 
nomy of England's greatest epic poet. The study of these works 
presents us with a new and most striking phase of his character 
and history : we see still the grand, colossal, and seraphic linea- 
ments of that intellectual being which has given us the picture of 
primeval innocence, of the splendours of Paradise, and the un- 
dying agonies of fallen yet immortal spirits ; but those lineaments 
are contracted with indignation, and lurid with fanatic and perse- 
cuting zeal ; the soul of Milton is still a mighty angel, but it is an 
angel of wrath and destruction — it is Azrael, the angel of death. 

The prose works of Milton possessing such peculiar features, 
and having occupied, in the composition, a portion of his life 
which may be considered apart from those epochs in his history 
which gave birth to his immortal poems, we will devote a few 
sentences to a rapid notice of their subjects, and an attempt to 
fix their value. Among the principal of these extraordinary com- 
positions, it will suffice to mention, in the first place, ' Areopa- 
gitica,' perhaps the noblest of them all : this is a ' Speech for the 
Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England.' 
It is singular enough, and characteristic of the inconsistency 
which always accompanies the policy of revolutionists, that the 
fanatic Parliament of England exercised a sway infinitely sterner 
and more tyrannical than had ever been attempted to be enforced 
by the government which it had overthrown ; and while the thou- 
sand wild sects which now wielded with ruthless hands the pow- 
ers usurped from the Britisli Constitution, maintained in its fullest 
development the right of individual liberty and the privilege of 
absolute freedom of private judgment, the inquisition on the press 
was never so severe as under their oppressive domination. Pre- 
tending to be the priests and servants of truth, and of free opin- 
ion — the nurse of truth — they fettered the expressions of all con- 
clusions not in harmony with tlieir own exaggerated doctrines :' 
the press was absolutely manacled, and fine, sequestration, and 
military law, the dungeon, the pillory, and tlie scourge were the 
rewards for the publication of anything not in servile accordance 
with their notions. 

Eternal honour, then, to Milton, that he manfully stood up for 
that great principle without which all the professions of the re- 
publicans were nothing but hypocrisy and inconsistence ! It was 
an object worthy of his lofty and ethereal spirit ; and nobly indeed 
did he fulfil it. ' Areopagitica' is a most eloquent and conclusive 
exposition of the necessity and advantages of a free press, and 
though entitled a " Speech," is rather an " Oration," conceived 



CHAP. IX.] Milton's prose style. 155 

and executed in the spirit of the great monuments of classic 
oratory. 

None, probably, of our readers are ignorant that the orations 
of Demosthenes and Cicero were elaborate and previously pre- 
pared compositions ; and that they in no way resemble that ex- 
tempore species of eloquence which is specilied by the term 
"speech," a word borrowed from the parliamentary eloquence 
of that country which has produced the greatest triumphs in this 
kind of harangue. Milton's style in this noble production, as well 
as in all his prose works, is in the highest degree majestic, and is 
a perfect reflex of the character of the man. 

The truth is, that Milton's mind was so completely imbued, 
so saturated, with ancient, and particularly with Greek literature, 
that he could not help imitating, often perhaps unconsciously, the 
involved structure, the complicated arrangement, and the half- 
rhythmical cadence of the sentences of Plato or Isocrates. 

In his eagerness to engraft upon our more rugged and unpliant 
tongue something of the delicacy, something of the ever-varying 
flexibility which characterises the ancient classical languages, he 
may be pardoned if he sometimes forgets the impossibility of 
complete success, and the danger of falling into obscurity and 
affectation, as well as an air of constraint and pedantry. A totally 
uninflected tongue as the English is can never be forcibly sub- 
mitted, even by the boldness and the genius of such a mind as 
Milton's, to the laws which govern a dilTerent language. Inde- 
pendently of the tone of learned and scholastic gravity naturally 
acquired by a proud and retiring student, something of the peculiar 
Latinisms and Gr8ecisms which distinguish Milton's style in 
poetry no less than in prose (much less obtrusively, it is true, and 
offensively in the former than in the latter) may be doubtless 
attributed to his proud contempt for the mean vulgarity which 
distinguished the style of many of his contemporaries, and par- 
ticularly the party with some of whose religious and political 
opinions the great poet had identitied himself. Like a man of 
noble birth and aristocratic manners accidentally embracing the 
popular side in a revolutionary movement, Milton appears ever 
anxious that he should not be confounded with the rude and 
Ignorant mob in whose ranks he for a moment may find himself, 
and puts on a double portion of stateliness and dignity. Having 
spoken of what certainly appears the most complete and import- 
ant of his prose works, and also the one which possesses the 
most general and intrinsic interest, the ' Areopagitica,' we will 
say a few words of several other compositions likely to attract 
the reader's attention by their singularity or by the precious details 
they give us of the author's personal character, sentiments, and 
pursuits. Milton composed two celebrated treatises on the law 



156 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. I^CHAP. IX. 

of divorce, which throw a great light on the poet's opinions re- 
specting the rights and social importance of the female sex, and 
pretty clearly indicate the almost Asiatic contempt with which he 
regarded the fairer part of the creation. At the same time these 
works give us a most extraordinary idea of the boldness, nay, the 
audacity, which characterises all Milton's speculations. Will it 
be believed that in one of these works, the ' Tetrachordon,' an 
exposition of the four places of the Old Testament in which the 
law of divorce is expressly treated, Milton has endeavoured to 
establish, from the rules and practice of Hebrew legislation, the 
lawfulness of allowing not only personal but moral " uncleanness*' 
to form the ground of separation between man and wife; and that 
in various passages of these books the most extreme latitude in 
this respect is not only tolerated but approved ? It is true that 
much of this eagerness to facilitate divorce may have arisen from 
a desire to relax, in his own case, the strictness of the marriage 
tie ; for we know that his first marriage was an unhappy one, and 
that his wife (the daughter of a cavalier) having left him and re- 
fused to return to his house, probably disgusted by the studious 
gloom and religious severity of the poet's life, he actually gave 
proof of the sincerity of his opinions by paying his addresses to 
another lady, whom he would infallibly have married but for the 
voluntary return and submission of his rebellious partner. 

The other work to which we have alluded is unspeakably pre- 
cious as giving us an insiglit into his own studies and literary 
meditations ; and though these most interesting details are scat- 
tered irregularly over all his productions, there are two passages 
so peculiarly rich in these invaluable notices, that they must be, 
independently of their own intrinsic grandeur and eloquence, 
among the most striking passages of autobiography which the 
world has ever seen. In one of them he gives a minute account 
of his own daily life and occupations, and in the other, after de- 
scribing his youthful studies, and the grand aspirations of his 
early ambition, he gravely passes in review before him a number 
of the sublimest subjects for some future work which should 
make his name immortal, and, with a serious and sustained en- 
thusiasm, than which perhaps the whole history of literature con- 
tains nothing more solemn and more sublime, promises to leave 
" something so writ as future ages shall not willingly let die." In 
this passage he proposes to himself a number of the mightiest 
events in the history of mankind ; he explains the means by which 
the immortal work could alone be worthily executed ; he describes 
the intense labour, the severe meditation, and "expense of Pal- 
ladian oil" which such a work would require ; and, above all, 
expresses his conviction that the true inspiration for such an effort 
of creative energy was to be sought for " not in the invocation of 



CHAP, ix.] Milton's prose works. 157 

Dame Memory and her Syren daughters, but in devout prayer to 
that Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and 
who sendeth out his seraphim with fire from his altar to touch 
and purify the lips of whom lie pleaseth." From hopes so sub- 
lime as these, expressed with so fervent and yet so exalted a de- 
votion, and supported by such unequalled powers and so intense 
and irresistible an industry, we might well expect a ' Paradise 
Lost.' 

In his singular little work, a ' Tractate (treatise) on Education,' 
Milton sets forth his own peculiar opinions on that all-important 
subject, and handles it with his usual boldness and originality of 
view. The book is distinguished by the same grand and organ- 
like harmony of language, and by the same tone of lofty dignity 
of thought, that mark all he ever wrote: in the project itself, as 
the subject under discussion is of a peculiarly practical nature, 
we find even more than his usual audacity of innovation and 
visionary sublimity of design. Naturally a despiser of authority 
and precedent, and living in an age when great political convul- 
sions made all men familiar with the wildest schemes of moral 
and social regeneration, Milton has drawn in this book a plan for 
an entirely new system of national education. We are not, there- 
fore, surprised to find that he rejects the whole machinery of the 
school and the university, considering the defects of each species 
of institution as in no way counterbalanced by their advantages ; 
and proposes, in place of the ancient method, a system chiefly 
imitated from the gymnasia of Sparta and of Athens ! Grand, 
noble, colossal, but at the same time (as our readers need hardly 
be cautioned) totally impracticable and Utopian, Milton's plan of 
education embraces, like that of the ancient Greeks, as may be 
collected from the half-fabulous accounts of the antique philoso- 
phers and historians, the physical no less than the moral and in- 
tellectual development of the human powers: the bodies of the 
Englisli youth were to be trained in all kinds of corporeal and 
gymnastic exercises, while their minds were to be occupied with 
the whole cycle of human knowledge, in which the arts, particu- 
larly that of music, were by no means to be neglected. The whole 
scheme reminds the reader of nothing so strongly as of the half- 
burlesque description of the education of Pantagruel in the im- 
mortal romance of Rabelais : and this will be quite enough to 
show its almost ludicrously impracticable character. Visionary, 
however, as is the general design, there are in this half-forgotten 
tract of Milton a thousand traces of wisdom, of genius, and of sub- 
limity, such as no hand but his own could have left; and even 
many of the suggestions are becoming generally adopted in the 
more complete and generous education of the present day, par- 
ticularly the more extended and universal study of music. 
U 



158 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. IX. 

This was an art of which Milton never speaks without a pecu- 
liar and most touching enthusiasm ; never does he omit to describe 
— and assuredly no poet has ever described them more frequently 
or more admirably — the charms and the virtues of music. Cole- 
ridge has called him (rather pointedly than justly, it is true) " less 
a picturesque than a musical poet ;" and not only do the gran- 
deur and the might of music incessantly form the subject of his 
most willing and most glorious soarings into the empyrean of 
poesy, but in all his works we find a peculiar and recognisable 
music, an echo of that celestial and seraphic harmony which 
rolls for ever before the throne of God — " a sevenfold chorus 
of Hallelujahs and harping symphonies." It was to music that 
Milton owed the only moments of relaxation which he permit- 
ted himself in the intervals of the severe and incessant studies, 
the fierce and strenuous controversies of his youth and manhood : 
the aspirations and the prayers which his proud and haughty 
spirit deigned not to send up to heaven from the midst of any 
congregation of Christians, rose, at dawn and eventide, upon the 
swelling notes of the organ, which he touched with no unskilful 
hand, or the more modest chords of his lute; and when "fallen 
on evil tongues and evil days, with darkness and with dangers 
compassed round," in blindness, in poverty, in neglect, with all 
his bright hopes and all his romantic visions shattered and crushed 
for ever, then it was that Music became the consolation and the 
comforter of her fondest worshipper, and breathed her softest 
melodies and her sublimest thunderbursts into the marvellous 
verses of the ' Paradise Lost.' 

The political career of England's greatest epic poet has been 
described by a vast variety of writers ; and while some have seen 
in the whole of his public life nothing but a manifestation of virtue 
and independence, others have found reigning throughout his poli- 
tical life the malignity of the fanatic and the ferocious arrogance 
of the revolutionist. It will be the safest, and probably also the 
most just judgment, to take a middle course between these two 
extremes ; and posterity, we think, will confirm our own conclu- 
sion with respect to the character of this admirable genius viewed 
as a Christian and as a citizen. It is impossible not to agree with 
the republican critics at least so far as regards the sincerity in the 
expression of opinion which none have pretended to deny to Mil- , 
ton ; but on the other hand we think that this illustrious name 
may well serve as a beacon to those ardent and aspiring spirits 
who think that genius, learning, and sincerity will suffice alone to 
guard human nature from error, from folly, or from crime, and 
who forget the deep truth of that admirable precept of the Great 
Founder of our religion, " Be ye as litde children." In the case ■, 
of an inferior and a less pure mind than Milton's, the sincerity of :• 



CHAP. IX.] PARADISE LOST. 159 

his republican opinions might perhaps be pleaded in excuse for 
the unfairness and violence of some of his attacks upon the nio- 
narchic institutions of his country ; and the universal coarseness 
and brutality of tone then prevalent in the style of controversy 
may be held as palliating the unchristian and inhuman malignity 
which characterises much of his polemic writings, particularly in 
his celebrated controversy with Salmasius ; but surely no such 
excuses will serve to diminish our reprobation for Milton's slan- 
derous attacks on the personal character of Charles I., who ap- 
pears, as a man, to have been worthy of respect, and even of 
veneration; who was, besides, an unfortunate and innocent prince, 
and had paid with his blood for the errors of an administration 
which, however erroneous, was at least well-intentioned. Nor 
can any one hope, but by sophistry, to excuse or justify the vari- 
ous acts of submission to arbitrary and usurped power which form 
so strong a contrast to Milton's perpetual and rather obtrusive 
assertions of independence — his accepting office, for instance, 
under the government of Cromwell ; his adulation of that wily 
despot ; and, above all, the melancholy weakness (if indeed we 
ought not rather to use a much severer term) which allowed him 
to profit by the plunder of the unfortunate and martyred sovereign, 
and to decorate his studious retirement with the pilfered trappings 
of royal magnificence; for, alas! we still possess the parliament- 
ary order permitting " Mr. .Fohn Milton," Latin Secretary of the 
House of Commons, to "choose and take away such hangings 
as he thinks fit," from the dismantled palace of Whitehall. 

Such facts as these are painful and humiliating, but salutary 
also ; they powerfully demonstrate that the greatest genius and 
the sublimest virtues can never guard from folly and from error 
the man who once loses sight of those plain and simple rules of 
Imman conduct — "Fear God, and honour the King.'''' 

At the beginning of this chapter we presented Milton to our 
readers in the character of the great epic poet of Christianity, and 
we expressed in a brief allusion the difference between the tone 
of thought and conception perceptible in the ' Paradise Lost' and 
that which pervades the 'Divina Commedia.' There is, indeed, 
a singular resemblance between the intellectual features of Milton 
and Dante, and no small similarity also in their lives. Both pos- 
sessed of all the knowledge of their age, both deeply versed in 
the loftiest subtleties of theology, both animated by a stern and 
intense religious enthusiasm, yet with minds susceptible of the 
softest as well as the sublimest emotions, each of them is the type 
and embodiment of an age of violent social convulsion. Tlie 
fierce and bloody struggles of Guelf and Ghibelline which drove 
the great Florentine to wander and die in exile, and the spirit of 
faction which infuses the waters of Marah throughout every page 



160 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. IX. 

of the Divine Comedy, will form a very close parallel with the 
furious civil conflicts which ended in tlie Protectorate, and the 
republican and sectarian haughtiness of Milton's political and 
polemic writings. But the difterence is, that Dante is essentially 
and peculiarly a Romanist poet, while Milton may be considered 
as the incarnation of the reformed faith — or rather of that faith 
in its extremest Calvinistic intensity. In their manner of treat- 
onent the two poets differ immensely, though grandeur is the dis- 
tinguishing peciiliarity of each; but the grandeur of Dante seems 
rather to proceed from the intense earnestness with which he 
realises his terrific or sublime creations, while that of the English 
poet seems rather to spring from idealising the phantoms of his 
imagination : in the one case it is (he concretive, in the other the 
abstractive power; the one is a painter, the other a sculptor. If 
"vve may venture to take our illustration from a sister art, we 
should rather compare the immortal poem of Dante to some of 
those extraordinary conceptions of the grim monastic genius of 
the Middle Ages in which our terror and interest are powerfully 
excited by representations whose elements are familiar and every- 
day ; while Milton's poetical conceptions recall rather the pure 
outline, the subdued tints, and the grand and pure simplicity of 
Raphael or of the classical sculpture. All readers have remarked 
this wonderful power of realizing in the one, and the perhaps 
equally wonderful faculty of idealizing in the other. When we 
follow Dante into the tremendous scenes of eternal punishment, 
Ave meet the poet's friends and acquaintance, speaking and 
acting as in the world ; his illustrations are of the same actual 
character; he compares the stench of Malebolge to the horrible 
fetor arising from the pest-house in the Val d'Arno ; his giants 
are described as so many cubits in height, and their size is com- 
pared to that of some tower familiar to his readers and to him- 
self; his demons are little else than hideous and cruel executioners. 
Milton, on the contrary, affects us less (at least in his more terrible 
and sublime delineations) by what he says than by what he leaves 
unsaid. In his lazar-house you see a dim vision of agonized 
motion, and you hear a mingled and inarticulate sound of lamen- 
tation : — 

" Dire was the tossing, deep the groans;" 

and where Dante would certainly have intensified, so to say, our 
feeling of the reality of the scene, Milton at once soars into ab- 
straction : — 

" Despair 
Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch ; 
And over them triumphant Death his dart 
Shook — but delay'd to strike." 



CHAP. IX.] PARADISE LOST. 161 

Airain, in his mode of portraying immensity of size : Satan 

stands 

" Like Teneriffe or Atlas, unremoved. 
His stature reach'd the sky, and on his crest 
Sate Horror plumed" — 

a picture which is absolutely Homeric. In Dante, and even more 
universally in Tasso, the terror or the sublimity is of the physical 
kind, and the impression is produced upon the imagination of the 
reader by the dread fidelity with which the picture is copied from 
some known or fancied reality : their demons have colossal size 
indeed, but they are furnished with the horns, the hoofs, the tails, 
and the talons of the monkish demonology of the Middle Ages : 
Milton's sublimest pictures, on the contrary, have none of this 
material or earthly horror about them, but are terrible thoughts, 
grim abstractions, whose lineaments are veiled and undefined, and 
which are only the more irresistible in the solemn dread they in- 
spire, as they address themselves, so to say, not to the eye, but 
to the imagination : they are fragments of the primeval dark, pas- 
sionless, formless, terrible. Speaking of Death, he says, — 

" The other Shape, 
If shape it might be called, that shape had none 
Distinguishable, in member, form, or limb ;" 

and again, in the same passage, which all the critics have agreed 
in calling one of the most wonderful embodiments of supernatu- 
ral terror which ever was conceived by poet, — 

" What seemed his head 
The likeness of a kingly crown had on." 

In these and many other passages the poet seems perpetually on 
the point of giving way to that tendency so natural in the human 
mind, to describe ; but his genius puts a bridle upon the realizing 
power, and the dread image is left in the awful vagueness of its 
mystery, becoming, like the veiled Isis, a thousand times more 
august and terrible from the cloud that shuts it from our eyes. 
The greatest of all poets. Homer, vEschylus, Shakspeare, not to 
mention the Hebrew Scriptures, are full of this kind of reticence, 
by which the grandeur of the object is rendered more terrible by 
the gloom and indefiniteness which surround it: when the Greeks 
are marching to the battle, glory blazes in their van like an un- 
wearied fire. What tremendous ideas are conjured up by Shak- 
speare's single line — 

" To be worse than worst, 
Of those that lawless and uncertain thoughts 
Imagine howling !" 

Everything in nature and in art which is supereminently grand 

14* 



162 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. IX. 

will invariably be found to be at the same time simple in the ex- 
treme; and, in looking through the wliole history of mankind for 
a subject worthy of his genius, Milton selected, most fortunately 
for posterity, the event whicli of all others was the grandest in 
itself, and at the same time possessed of the most universal and 
eternal interest to the whole human race — the Creation and the 
Fall of Man. We say fortunately, for we know that he long 
hesitated as to what subject he should choose: — "Time serves 
not now, and perhaps I might seem too profuse, to give any cer- 
tain account of what the mind at home, in the spacious circuits 
of her musing, halh liberty to propose to herself, though of high- 
est hope and hardest attempting. . . . And lastly, what king or 
knight before the conquest might be chosen in whom to lay the 
pattern of a Christian hero." From various passages of his 
works it is clear that he had meditated taking as the subject of a 
great epic, among others, the half-fabulous adventures of Arthur, 
and throughout all his poems are scattered numberless allusions 
exhibiting his profound acquaintance with, and deep admiration 
for, all the treasures of mediaeval romantic literature: — 

" And what resounds 
In fable or romance of Other's son, 
Begirt with British and Armoric knights; 
And all who since, baptised or infidel, 
Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban, 
Damasco, or Morocco, or Trebisond, 
Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore, 
When Charlemain with all his peerage fell 
By Fontarabia." 

No language that we could use would be sufficiently strong to 
express the extent and exactness of this writer's learning; a word 
which we use in its largest and most comprehensive sense : no 
species of literature, no language, no book, no art or science seems 
to have escaped his curiosity, or resisted the combined ardour 
and patience of his industry. His works may be considered as 
a vast arsenal of ideas drawn from every region of human specu- 
lation, and either themselves the condensed quintessence of know- 
ledge and wisdom, or dressing and adorning the fairest and most 
majestic conceptions. If Shakspeare's immortal dramas are like 
the rich vegetation of a primeval paradise, in which all that is 
sweet, healing, and beautiful springs up uncultured from a virgin 
soil, the productions of Milton may justly be compared to one of 
those stately and magnificent gardens so much admired in a former 
age, in which the perceptible art and regularity rather sets off and 
adorns nature — a stately solitude perfumed by the breath of all 
home-born and exotic flowers, with lofty and airy music ever and 
anon floating through its moonlit solitudes, decorated by the di- 
vine forms of antique sculpture— now a grace, a Cupid, or a 



CHAP. IX.] PARADISE LOST. 163 

Nymph of Phidias ; now a prophet or a Sibyl of Michael An- 
gel o. 

In his delineation of what was perhaps the most difficult por- 
tion of his vast picture, the beauty, purity, and innocence of our 
first parents, he has shown not only a fertility of invention, but 
a severe and Scriptural purity of taste as surprising as it is rare. 
His Adam and Eve, without ceasing for a moment to be human, 
are beings worthy of the paradise they inhabit. In the portrait- 
ure of their primeval beauty — the primeval perfection, fresh from 
the hand of God — there can be no doubt that the poet has em- 
bodied the impressions left on his mind by the contemplation of 
the great monuments of art which he had seen in Italy, and which 
he so well knew how to appreciate. The relics of ancient sculpture 
gave him in all probability something of their severe simplicity 
of outline, while the pictures of Raphael may have communi- 
cated the sweetness, grace, and heavenly expression of his su- 
pernatural and earthly personages. 

But of all the arts which have left their spirit to live and glow 
through the undying pages of 'Paradise Lost,' music is the one 
whose influence is most intensely and uninterruptedly felt. Of 
the power of music Milton held a most exalted idea ; partly, 
perhaps, because its pure and ethereal pleasures were most in 
accordance with the heroic and celestial character of his mind ; 
partly because it was the art which he had himself most success- 
fully cultivated ; and partly, too, no doubt, because it was the only 
art which his blindness, during a great portion of his life, left 
him the possibility of enjoying otherwise than in memory. The 
Paradise of Dante is composed of the two ideas of light and 
music; and in Milton, though less exclusively brought forward, 
music may be said to be the living spirit animating and pervading 
every creation of his genius. It is music which breathes in every 
changing harmony of his intricate and lofty versification; it is 
music which composes the noblest passages in his Heaven and 
his Paradise; it is music, too, which forms the only contrast with 
the hopeless agonies of his Hell : not the trivial and sensuous 
music of modern days, but those solemn and majestic harmonies 
which were so honoured in the religious and philosophical sys- 
tems of ancient Greece, and which are perhaps not imperfectly 
reflected in the grand compositions of Paesiello, of Handel, and 
of Beethoven : — 

" The Dorian mood 
Of flutes and soft recorders ; such as raised 
To height of noblest temper heroes old 
Arming to battle; and, instead of rage, 
Deliberate valour breathed, firm and unmoved ; 
Nor vv'anting power to mitigate and 'suage, 
With solemn touches, troubled thoughts, and chase 
Anguish, and doubt, and fear, and sorrow, and pain, 
From mortal or immortal minds."' 



164 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. []cHAP. IX. 

The noble and reverential criticism of Campbell is at once so 
complete and so condensed, that it will not, we think, be inappro- 
priate to quote some passages of it in this place ; nothing can be 
better or more discriminating: — 

"Milton has certainly triumphed over one difficulty of his sub- 
ject, the paucity and the loneliness of its human agents ; for no 
one in contemplating the garden of Eden would wish to exchange 
it for a more populous world. His earthly pair could only be 
represented, during their innocence, as beings of simple enjoy- 
ment and negative virtue, with no other passions than the fear of 
Heaven and the love of each other. Yet from these materials 
what a picture has he drawn of their homage to the Deity, their 
mutual affection, and the horrors of their alienation i * * * « 

" In the angelic warfare of the poem, Milton has done what- 
ever human genius could accomplish. * * « * fhe warlike 
part of ' Paradise Lost' was inseparable from its subject. I feel 
too strong a reverence for Milton to suggest even the possibility 
that he could have improved his poem by having thrown his an- 
gelic warfare into more remote perspective ; but it seems to me to 
be most sublime when it is least distinctly brought home to the 
imagination. What an awful effect has the dim and undefined 
conception of the conflict which we gather from the opening of 
the First Book ! There the ministers of divine vengeance and 
pursuit had been recalled — the thunders had ceased 
' To bellow through the vast and boundless deep ;' 

and our terrific conception of the past is deepened by its indis- 
tinctness. 

" The array of the fallen angels in hell, the unfurling of the 
standard of Satan, and the march of his troops ; all this human 
pomp and circumstance of war — all this is magic and overwhelm- 
ing illusion. The imagination is taken by surprise. But the 
noblest efforts of language are tried with very unequal effect to 
interest us in the immediate and close view of the battle itself in 
the Sixth Book; and the martial demons, who charmed us in the 
shades of hell, lose some portion of their sublimity when their 
artillery is discharged in the daylight of heaven." 

Another circumstance of admirable originality and effect in the 
supernatural delineations of the 'Paradise Lost' is the singular 
felicity with which Milton has given variety and interest to the 
personages of his fallen angels, by considering them as the de- 
mons afterwards destined to mislead mankind under the guise of 
the deities of classical mythology. The idea of the ancient oracles 
being the inspiration of infernal spirits, permitted for a time to de- 
lude the world, is not, it is true, originally Milton's ; he found it 
pervading all the chivalrous and monkish legends of the Middle 



CHAP. IX.] PARADISE REGAINED — MINOR POEMS. 165 

Ages ; and though many poets have adopted a notion so admira- 
bly calculated to communicate poetical effect, and so well uniting 
Paganism with Christianity, none of them — not even Tasso, or 
our own Spenser — have made such noble or such frequent use of 
this powerful means of exciting interest in a Christian work. 

In the companion work to his immortal epic, in the 'Paradise 
Regained' — the 'Odyssey' to our Christian 'Iliad' — the first 
thing that strikes the reader is the unfortunate selection of the sub- 
ject, and the general inferiority and weaker interest which mark 
the execution. Neither Milton, nor any human being who ever 
lived, could have done justice to the only subject worthy of form- 
ing a pendant, or complement, to the tale 

" Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit 
Of that forbidden tree." 

The subject to which we allude is, of course, the Crucifixion of 
our Saviour — the only event recorded in past, or possible in future 
times, of an interest sufficiently powerful, universal, and external, 
to be placed in comparison with the Fall of Man. Much as we 
may regret that Milton's peculiar and not very well-understood 
opinions respecting the divine nature of Christ, and the complete- 
ness of the sacrifice of the Redemption, induced him to select for 
the principal action of the ' Paradise Regained,' not the awful 
consummation of that sacrifice on the Mount of Calvary, but 
rather a comparatively unimportant incident in the earthly career 
of the Redeemer — the Temptation in the desert — it may be 
doubted whether even Milton's sublime genius could have worthily 
represented to mortal eyes that terrible crisis in the destiny of 
man. Sublime as were the flights of that eagle genius — and what 
intellect ever soared 

" With plume so strong, so equal, and so soft," 

into the loftiest empyrean of poetry, the unshadowed glory of 
heaven's eternal atmosphere, the flower-breathing air of primeval 
Eden, or the " thick darkness" of hell? — it must have flagged — 
even that mighty and tireless pinion — in the gloom and thunder- 
cloud that veiled the more than human agonies of the Cross ! 

Of some of the minor works of Milton we have already said 
a few words. On those which we have left unnoticed it will 
hardly be necessary to dilate much more. The merit of these 
productions consists so much more peculiarly in the manner than 
in the matter, and they derive so much of their charm from 
their tone and mode of treatment, that a mere analysis would 
utterly fail in giving any idea of their excellences ; while the 
reader may obtain, from a single perusal of any of them, a much 
clearer notion of their style than from the most laboured and cri- 
tical panegyric. They all bear the stamp of the Miltonic mind — 



166 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. fcHAP. IX. 

fulness, conciseness, a pure and Scriptural severity and dignity, 
and the most consummate grace and variety of versification. 

In ' Samson Agonistes,' Milton has given us in English a perfect 
Sophoclean tragedy, in which every minutest peculiarity of the Attic 
scene is so faithfully and exactly reproduced, that a reader unac- 
quainted with the Greek language will form a much more just 
and correct notion of classical tragedy from reading the ' Samson,' 
than from studying even the finest and most accurate translations 
of the great dramas of the Athenian theatre. This may appear 
extravagant, nay, even paradoxical; but we speak advisedly. 
The Greek tragedies were grand historical compositions, founded 
upon the traditional or mythologic legends of the people for whom 
they were written, and whose religious and patriotic feelings were 
in the highest degree appealed to by what they considered as 
a sacred and affecting representation; exactly as the rude audience 
of the Middle Ages had their sensibilities powerfully excited by 
the mysteries. The Greek dramas were, in fact, the mysteries 
and miracle-plays of the Pagan world, and differed from those of 
the thirteenth century only in their greater polish and refinement 
as compositions. Now, the legends of classical mythology neces- 
sarily affect no less than the stories of the Scripture history; and 
consequently the 'Samson' (being in all points of structure and 
arrangement an exact facsimile of a Greek tragedy) produces 
upon us, Christians, an effect infinitely more analogous to that 
made upon an Athenian by a tragedy of Sophocles than could be 
produced by our reading the best mere translation of a tragedy 
of Sophocles that the skill of man ever executed. 

In ' Comus' Milton has given us the most perfect and exquisite 
specimen of a masque, or rather he has given us a kind of ennobled 
and glorified masque. The refinement, the elegance, the courtly 
grace and chivalry — all is there ; but there is something in ' Comus' 
better, loftier, and grander than all this — something which no 
other masques, with all their refined, and scholarlike, and airy 
elegance, have ever approached — a high and philosophic vein of 
morality: 

" Divine philosophy. 
Not harsh and rugged, as dull fools suppose, 
But musical as is Apollo's lute;" 

deep and grand thoughts fetched from the exhaustless fountains 
of the great minds of old — his beloved Plato and the Stagyrite^ 
thoughts fresh with the immortality of their birthplace. 



CHAP. X. 3 BUTLER AND DRYDEN. 167 



CHAPTER X. 

BUTLER AND DRYDEN. 

The Commonwealth and the Restoration — Milton and Butler — Subject and Na- 
ture of Hudibras — Hudibras and Don Quixote — State of Society at the Resto- 
ration — Butler's Life — John Dryden — French Taste of the Court — Comedies 
and Rhymed Tragedies — Life and Works of Dryden — Dramas — Annus Mira- 
bilis — Absalom and Achitophel — Religio Laici — Hind and Panther — Dryden's 
later Works — Translation of Virgil — Odes — Fables — Prefaces and Dedications 
— Juvenal — Mac Flecknoe. 

The great productions of literature may be looked at under 
two different aspects or relations. Every illustrious name in 
letters may be considered as typifying and expressing some great 
and strongly marked epoch in the history of man in general, and 
also as the offspring and embodiment of some particular era, or 
some peculiar state of feeling existing in the nation of which 
that name is an ornament : that is to say, criticism may be gene- 
ral or particular, cosmopolite or national. Thus Milton, viewed 
as a colossal intellect, without any reference to his particular 
century or country, may be looked upon as the type and ofl'spring 
of the Reformation and of the republican spirit combined ; re- 
garded with reference to England and the seventeenth century, 
he will be found to embody the Commonwealth — that stirring 
and extraordinary period of British history, when the united in- 
fluences of those two mighty phenomena were acting on a stage 
sufficiently limited, and during a period sufficiently short, to 
enable us to form a clear and well-defined idea of their character. 
The period at which Milton wrote was, as we have seen, a period 
of vehement struggle between powerful and opposite principles : 
and if in the illustrious author of ' Paradise Lost' we find the 
eloquent assertor of the liberty of the press, and the uncom- 
promising advocate for democratic forms of government, we can- 
not be surprised if we behold, in the ranks of the royalist parly, 
a mighty champion of monarchy, and an irresistible satirist of 
the follies and vices of the republicans. This champion, this 
satirist, is Samuel Butler, perhaps the greatest master who ever 
lived of the comic or burlesque species of satiric writing — a 
strange and singular genius, whose powers of ridicule were as 
incomparable as the story of his life is melancholy. In point of 
learning, vast, multifarious, and exact, he was no unworlliy rival 



168 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. X. 

of Milton: in originality of conception and brilliancy of form his 
work is unequalled ; indeed ' Hudibras' is one of those produc- 
tions which may be said to stand alone in literature. It is not to 
be denied that the reputation obtained out of England by this 
extraordinary work, is by no means commensurate with its real 
merit as an effort of genius and originality, or with the vast store 
of wisdom and of wit contained in its pages ; nor is it even pro- 
bable that this indifference to its merits will ever at any future 
period be less than it has hitherto been, or than it is at present. 
It arises from a very natural cause. The subject of Butler's 
satire was too local and temporary to command that degree of 
attention in other countries, without which the highest powers of 
humour and imagination will have been exerted in vain. It is 
undoubtedly true that the vices, the crimes, the follies so pitilessly 
ridiculed in 'Hudibras' are common to mankind in almost every 
state of civilised society ; but we must no less remember that 
some of the more prominent of them never burst forth into so full 
a bloom of absurdity and extravagance as they did at the memo- 
rable epoch of English history which he has caricatured. The 
Commonwealth and the Protectorate form a revolutionary epoch, 
and, like all epochs of revolution, were fertile in strong contrasts 
of political and social physiognomy. Such periods, acting, as 
they so powerfully do, upon the manners of a people, are admi- 
rably suited for the purposes of the satiric poet. At such times 
the elements of faction, the extravagances of opinion, of senti- 
ment, of manners, of costume, are brought prominenUy out upon 
the surface of society, and present themselves, so to say, in a 
condensed and tangible form, which the satirist has only to copy 
to produce a vivid and striking picture — fortunate, too, if a future 
age, free from these violent agitations and strong contrasts, does 
not charge him with exaggeration, and mistake the grotesque but 
faithful delineations of his pencil for the sportiveness of carica- 
ture. Curious as they are to the moral speculator, and full of 
matter to the studious searcher into the history of party, the ab- 
surdities of that legion of fanatical sects by whom the destinies 
of England were then swayed are neither sufficiently attractive 
or picturesque in themselves, nor sufficiently well known to the 
general European reader, for Butler's admirable pictures of them 
to be generally studied or understood out of England ; for with 
political satire, no less than political caricature, much of the 
point of the jest is lost to those who are not able to judge of the 
likeness. It may be objected that, to the great body of English 
readers, the very considerable time that has elapsed since the 
occurrences took place which Butler has ridiculed, and the total 
disappearance of the things and the men represented in his poem, 
must have rendered them as strange and almost as unintelligible 



CHAP. X.] HUDIBRAS BURLESQUE AND MOCK-HEROIC rOEMS. 169 

as they are to the non-English reader, from remoteness of place 
as well as distance of time, and dissimilarity of manners, cus- 
toms, and sentiments. This is undonbtedly true to some extent: 
but the intensely idiomatic spirit of this excellent writer has given 
to his work a sap and a vitality which no obsoleteness of subject 
could destroy. An immense number of his verses have passed 
into the ordinary everyday language of his countrymen : con- 
taining, as they often do, the condensed thought of proverbs, they 
have hxed themselves on the memory of the people by their pro- 
verb-like oddity and humour of expression, and often by the 
quaint jingle of their rhymes. Thus multitudes of Butler's cou- 
plets float loosely in the element of ordinary English dialogue, and 
are often heard from the mouths of men who are themselves 
ignorant of the source of these very expressions, and who pos- 
sibly hardly know that such a poet as Butler and such a poem as 
' Hudibras' ever existed. The fundamental idea of ' Hudibras' is, 
in our opinion, singularly happy. The title of the poem, which 
is also the name of its hero, is taken from the old romances of 
chivalry. Sir Hugh de Bras being the appellation of one of the 
knights (an Englishman, too, according to the legend) of Ar- 
thur's fabulous Round Table. Much also of the structure of the 
poem is a kind of burlesque of those ancient romances; and the 
very versification itself is the rhymed octosyllable so much em- 
ployed by the Norman trouveres, a measure singularly well 
adapted for continuous and easy narrative, and consequendy pecu- 
liarly fit for burlesque. Of comic poetry, part of whose humour 
consists in a resemblance or contrast between a ludicrous imita- 
tion and a serious or elevated original, there are two principal 
species. In the one, the characters, events, language, and style 
of a sublime and pathetic work are retained, but mingled with 
mean and ludicrous objects ; as when the heroes of the ' Iliad' are 
represented as cowards, gluttons, and thieves: and in the other, 
trivial or ridiculous personages and events are described with a 
pomp of language and an affected dignity of style wholly dis- 
proportioned to their real importance. The former species of 
writing, it is hardly necessary to say, is called burlesque, and the 
second mock-heroic. Of the first kind are the innumerable tra- 
vesties of the ancient poets ; and of the second both the French 
literature and the English possess excellent specimens, though 
the 'Lutrin' is not to be compared to the 'Rape of the Lock.' 
Although both tliese kinds of comic writing may appear to have 
been the offspring of a considerably advanced period of literature, 
it is nevertheless certain that specimens of them are to be found 
at an exceedingly early epoch — even in the very infancy of poetry 
in the heroic age, and in its second birth or avatar of the romantic 
or chivalric period of the Middle Ages. We need only mention, 
15 



170 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. X. 

in proof of our first proposition, the ' Battle of the Frogs and Mice,' 
falsely, it is obvious, ascribed to Homer, but still a work of very- 
high antiquity; and also we may refer to many of the comedies 
of Aristophanes. As to our second position — that in which we 
speak of the existence in the Middle Ages of this kind of comic 
writing — it will be necessary to refer rather more fully to the litera- 
ture of that early period, not only because this section of it is less 
likely to be familiar to our readers, but also because it bears more 
immediately upon the subject in hand — ' Hudibras' being, to a cer- 
tain degree, a burlesque of the tales of chivalry which form the 
staple of mediaeval literature. We have, then, numberless proofs 
that the solemn, wonderful, and stately romance of the trouvere 
was often parodied, and that ludicrous and burlesque poems were 
frequently written, for the purpose of exciting mirth, in which 
the stately manners and occupations of the knight were repre- 
sented in connexion with the ignorance, rudeness, and coarse 
merriment of the peasant; somewhat in a similar manner as we 
find in the Attic theatre the terrible and pathetic tragedy made a 
source of laughter in the satiric drama, which is supposed to have 
formed a part of the trilogy of the ancients. Of these latter only 
one example now exists, in the ' Cyclops' of Euripides, an ad- 
mirable and most laughable jeu cVesprit, in which the heroic 
manners and adventure of Ulysses and Polyphemus are evidenUy 
travestied from a serious tragic version (now lost) of the same 
adventure, which formed one of the members of the same trilogy. 
Not to speak of the ancient Norman subdivision of the Romanz 
poetry, we need not look farther than our own country to find 
several examples of the same kind of humour existing in the 
chivalrous literature of the Middle Ages. And the thing is natural 
enough : the taste and feeling of the ludicrous, which seem innate 
in the human mind, will find a ready food in the serious or ele- 
vated productions fashionable in any age or country. Among 
the early English poems to which we have 'alluded there are two 
which are not only admirable for their oddity and humour, but 
curious, as presenting perfect examples of the principle of which 
we are speaking: these are the 'Tournament of Tottenham' and 
the ' Hunting of the Hare.' In the former of these singular jewa: 
cVesprit the reader will find a very lively parody of the language, 
sentiment, and usages of the chivalric period. The subject is a 
solemn tourney, or " passage of arms," in which the actors are 
clowns and peasants instead of high-born and gentle knights, and 
in which the peculiar terms and ceremonies of these solemn and 
splendid spectacles are most ludicrously burlesqued and misap- 
plied. In the 'Hunting of the Hare' the leading idea is nearly 
similar, with the exception that it is not the language and the 
usages of the tournament which arc burlesqued by their connexion 



CHAP. X.] HUDIBRAS AND DON QUIXOTE. 171 

with the lowest order of the people, but the terms and, if we may 
so style it, the technology of the art of venery — an art which was 
in those ages considered as only second in importance to the 
science of war, which possessed a language of its own no less 
com|)licated and elaborate, and was, no less than it, the peculiar 
privilege of the nobles. In this curious poem the "base-born 
churls" go out to hunt the hare with all the ceremonies of knightly 
venery; and the poem, which describes their mishaps and their 
ignorant misapplication of terms and customs, produced its effect 
in a similar way to the laughable caricature of military and 
heraldic splendour in the ' Tournament of Tottenham.' 

" Cervantes laugh'd Spain's chivalry away," 

says Byron; and though it is an error to suppose that the ludi- 
crous adventures of the Knight of La Mancha can in any sense be 
said to have destroyed a system which had ceased to exist when 
Cervantes wrote, yet every reader must feel how much of the 
comic effect of this immortal work arises from the strong contrast 
and want of harmony between the Don's peculiar train of ideas 
and the social condition of the times in which he attempts to 
realise his hallucination. So completely indeed had knight- 
errantry ceased to exist at the period when the Don is supposed 
to set out on his adventures, that Cervantes was obliged to adopt 
the idea oi insanity in his hero ere he could bring in contact two 
states of society — two conditions of sentiment so incompatible as 
the chivalric age and the real manners of his own day. But 
every one sees how much the ludicrous effect is heightened, nay, 
how completely it proceeds from this forcible juxtaposition of dis- 
cordant periods; for as all true beauty arises, in nature and in art, 
from harmony, so the ludicrous has ever for its principal element 
the incongruous and the discordant. Place Don Quixote in the 
real age of chivalry, surround him with the real customs and 
ideas which his "fine madness" has conjured up from the past 
and from the world of imagination, and he ceases to be a ludi- 
crous, or even an extraordinary character. 

In 'Hudibras,' the form of the poem, the versification, and the 
conception of some of the adventures, derive their comic piquancy 
from their resemblance to the solemn tales of Anglo-Norman chi- 
valry. The age of knight-errantry is indeed far less prominently 
brought in contrast and opposition with a different period in 
'Hudibras' than in ' Don Quixote ;' but it is so brought to a certain 
degree, and with a certain degree of efiect : and herein we may 
perceive a proof of Butler's good sense. The manners of Spain 
when Cervantes lived were indeed widely different from those of 
the chivalric age; but they were not so completely changed but 
that many relics of chivalry still existed in the legends, the songs, 



172 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. X. 

and the recollections of the people: these existed then, it is ob- 
vious, for they exist, to a certain extent, down to the present day. 
But England, when Butler wrote, England in the civil war and 
under the Long Parliament, was as perfect and absolute a con- 
trast to the chivalric age as the mind of man can conceive. Buder 
therefore contented himself with taking from that period certain 
general outlines for his picture ; the principal of which — the idea 
of representing his hero as setting out, attended by his squire, in 
a garb and an equipment ludicrously caricatured, knight-errant- 
like, to destroy abuses — he undoubtedly took from Cervantes. 
The characters of the Knight of La Mancha and his inimitable 
squire, it should be observed, grotesque as they are, are in no 
sense intended to excite, or capable of exciting, any feeling but 
that of merriment — a merriment which in the case of the former 
is always tempered with respect and pity. The object of BuUer 
was different: he intended to produce in us a feeling of ridicule 
and contempt, and of contempt carried as far towards detestation 
as was compatible with the existence of the ridiculous. And in 
their respective aims, both so different and so difficult, each of 
these great wits has wonderfully succeeded. Cervantes makes 
you laugh at his admirable hero, and yet love him the more the 
more you laugh; while Butler causes you to detest Sir Hudibras 
as much as it is possible to detest him without ceasing to laugh. 
Pity and abhorrence are both tragic passions, and consequently, 
when carried beyond certain limits, are destructive of the sense 
of ridicule: and these two great men have each in his peculiar 
line carried their ludicrous character exacUy so far as to touch 
the brink where the comic ceases, and where the tragic begins. 
BuUer's object in writing 'Hudibras' was to cover the fanatic and 
republican party with irresistible ridicule; and in that assemblage 
of odious and contemptible vices which he has, as it were, con- 
densed in the persons of Sir Hudibras and his clerk, it is impos- 
sible not to see at once the strong though certainly exaggerated 
resemblance between the original and the portrait, and the extra- 
ordinary genius of the painter. Sir Hudibras, a Presbyterian 
officer and justice of the peace, sets out, attended by his clerk 
Ralph (who is the representative of the Independents), to correct 
abuses, and to enforce the observance of the strict laws lately 
made by the fiinatic parliament for the suppression of the sports 
and amusements of the people. In moral and intellectual charac- 
ter, in political and religious principles, this worthy pair forms 
a parallel as just and admirable as in grotesque accoutrement, in 
cowardice, and in paradoxical ingenuity. The description of 
their character, dress, equipment, and even their horses, is as 
complete and finished a picture as can be conceived; not a single 



CHAP. X.] HUDIBRAS AND DON QUIXOTE. 173 

stroke of satire is omitted; they live before us a perfect embodi- 
ment of everything that is repulsive and contemptible. 

Though the lines which distinguish these two personages are 
drawn with a strong, a learned, and a delicate hand, there is too great 
a natural resemblance between the two classes of which Hudibras 
and Ralph are the representatives for us to derive from them the 
pleasure we find in Don Quixote, and which arises from the happy 
and humorous contrast between the Don and Sancho. The differ- 
ences between Presbyterian and Independent, Antinomian and 
Fifth-Monarchy-men, were much better known and more easily 
distinguished when Butler wrote than they can be now after so 
many years have tended to confound in one general indistinctness 
the peculiar features which gave individual character to the thou- 
sand sects then struggling for supremacy, each hating with a fer- 
vent hatred the Church and the monarchy of England, but ab- 
horring each other with far greater cordiality. But it was not so 
when Butler wrote, and we cannot, therefore, justly complain 
that a work written with a particular and definite purpose of local 
and temporary satire does not possess a greater universality of 
design than it was likely, or indeed possible, it should have. We 
must remember that the vices and follies ridiculed in 'Hudibras,' 
though they may no longer exist under the same forms, yet are 
inherent in human nature; and we may accept this sharp and 
brilliant satire as an attack, not upon the Presbyterian or Inde- 
pendent of 1660, but upon pedantry, hypocrisy, upon political 
and religious fanaticism. 

The plot and adventures of this poem are very slight and un- 
important: the butt of the author was the whole Puritan party, 
and he was more likely to render that party ridiculous by what 
he makes his personages say than by anything he could make 
them do. The numerous dialogues scattered through the work 
are, in this respect, more powerful means of throwing contempt 
on the object of the satire than the events ; though many of the 
latter, as the adventure of the bear and fiddle, the imprisonment 
in the stocks, the self-inflicted whipping of the knight, &c. &c., 
are recounted with great gaiety and invention. The learning, the 
inexhaustible wit, the ingenuity, the ever-surprising novelty of 
the dialogues, forbid us to regret, or rather altogether prevent us 
from perceiving, that the intrigue is so imperfect and inartificial 
as hardly to deserve the name of a plot, that the action is incon- 
sistent, and left unfinished at the conclusion — if, indeed, the abrupt 
termination of the poem can correctly be called a conclusion — in 
which nothing is concluded. 

In the interval between the appearance of the first and last 
cantos the Restoration had taken place, to which Butler had so 
powerfully contributed, and from which he was deslined to meet 

15* 



174 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. X. 

with such ingratitude; and consequently many of the topics which 
he had treated with such admirable humour in the first part had 
become obsolete; so that it may be doubted whether Butler could, 
have completed his work, or whether the work would have been 
rendered more valuable had he done so. Its success was immense 
— addressed as it was to the strongest prejudices of the royalists, 
and directed against a party whose peculiar vices were unusually 
well adapted to serve as a butt for the satirist. It immediately 
became the most popular book of the time, was quoted and ad- 
mired by all the courtiers, and by the merry king himself, who 
was certainly able, whatever were his deficiencies in more import- 
ant points, to enjoy and appreciate the wit of ' Hudibras ;' but 
who, with that ungrateful levity which forms the worst feature of 
his character, forgot to reward the admirable author to whom he 
owed much in more senses than one. Butler was born in 1612, 
and, as far as the imperfect notices which we possess of his early 
career permit us to ascertain, he appears to have been recom- 
mended (probably by his youthful learning) to the Countess of 
Kent, under whose protection he remained some time, enjoying 
the acquaintance and conversation of the wise and excellent Sel- 
den. He appears afterwards to have passed some time in the 
service (as clerk or tutor) of Sir Samuel Luke, one of Cromwell's 
officers, and this person is supposed to have sat for the portrait 
of the hero of ' Hudibras.' Butler has hence been accused of in- 
gratitude and an odious betrayal of his benefactor; but so grave 
a charge as this deserves, particularly when brought against an 
illustrious genius, a much more conclusive degree of proof than 
the evidence will supply. We must know, first, whether Butler 
was really treated in tlie family of Sir Samuel Luke with kind- 
ness sufficient to justify us in giving the name of ingratitude to his 
satirizing of that personage ; and, secondly, we must have better 
evidence as to the severity and malice of the alleged satire itself 
than is to be gathered from the very few and not very distinct 
allusions to Sir Samuel occurring in the poem of Hudibras.' The 
rapid and immediate success of Butler's poem of course brought 
him under the notice of the court of the Restoration, whose inte- 
rests the satire had so powerfully served; and Charles presented 
the author with a sum of 300/., promising to do more for him. 
This promise, however, the king never fulfilled, and the great wit, 
after living in poverty and obscurity for a (ew years longer, died 
in 1680, in a wretched lodging in Covent Garden, then the most 
miserable and squalid quarter of London. He was even indebted 
to the charity of a friend for a grave, as he did not possess suffi- 
cient property to pay his funeral expenses ; and it was not till 
some time after his death that this great comic genius received the 
honour of a monument, which was erected, with a laudatory in- 



CHAP. X.] DRYDEN. .175 

scription, at the cost of an admirer. This tardy recognition of 
Butler's merit gave origin to one of the acutest epigrams in the 
English language : — 

" Whilst Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive, 
No generous patron would a dinner give : 
See him, when starved to death and turn'd to dust, 
Presented with a monumental bust. 
The poet's fate is here in emblem shown ; 
He ask'd for bread, and he received a stone." 

But the true type of the principles of taste, and the system, 
not only of literature, but even — we may almost say — even of 
morality which were introduced into England at the restoration 
of the Stuarts, is John Dryden, a poet and critic who, if he does 
not deserve a place among the very lirst and greatest lights of his 
country's literature, yet must always he ranged at the very head 
of the second class. The great revolution in taste to which we 
have just alluded modified to a most important extent the whole 
face and relations of society, and so powerful was its influence 
that its effects are very plainly traceable over the whole of that 
long period of history extending from the Restoration to the first 
French Revolution. In order to appreciate and measure the effects 
of this change, it will be necessary to throw a glance upon tiie 
nature and causes of its occurrence at this particular period ; and 
in so doing we shall find a new opportunity of perceiving how 
closely and intimately connected are the political and literary 
career of every civilized nation. We have seen, in the Eliza- 
bethan age, the newly-developed energies of national genius 
bursting forth, under the fostering glow of political grandeur, com- 
mercial prosperity, and great social cultivation, into the most ex- 
traordinary fertility and productiveness ; it was under the wise 
and vigorous sway of that great sovereign that the country first 
took up its position as a prominent member of the great European 
famil3\ The struggles of the Reformation too, however disastrous 
may have been their temporary effect, had accustomed the minds 
of men to habits of inquiry, and fortified their intellectual energies 
by the greatest freedom of discussion exercised upon subjects of 
the gravest and most enduring importance, and, at the same time, 
the literature had not been so far cultivated, nor the principles of 
taste so far established, as to expose the writers of that period to 
the fatal influence of precedent and authority, compelling them 
(as invariably happens in more advanced periods of cultivation) 
to accept without inquiry any set of models from some particular 
age or country,* The result of all this was, that those writers (of 
whom Sliakspeare ia poetry, and Bacon in philosophy, are the 
most glorious and complete examples) possessed in the highest 
degree the apparently opposite qualities of originality and good 
sense. Living as it were in the infancy of literature, they brought 



17& OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. X. 

to the contemplation of the great productions of other lands and 
other ages an eye unhackneyed and fresh, enabling them to per- 
ceive the beauties of nature and of art with a sensibility and a 
relish arising from novelty ; and at the same time they were 
cramped and enslaved in their own productions by none of those 
timid systems which are founded upon the supposed necessity of 
imitating some particular models. That character of freshness, 
earnestness, and intensity, which marks the thoughts of childhood, 
is stamped also upon the productions of the infancy of literature ; 
the thoughts of men at such a period have not lost their bloom — 
the dew is still upon them. 

The English nation, exhausted with incessant agitation, and 
wearied of endless and unprofitable dissensions in religion, hailed 
with rapture the return of their exiled king, and foresaw in a 
re-establishment of monarchy a pledge for stability, for peace, and 
for prosperity. In the ardour of triumphant loyalty they looked 
forward to " Saturnian days," and expected that with a restored 
throne would be restored also the ancient nationality and modes 
of thought of the English people. But these hopes were destined, 
as might indeed have been foreseen, to be disappointed. The 
exiled king, and the little court which accompanied him in all his 
wanderings, had lost much of the spirit of nationality. Pensioners 
on the bounty of foreign states, Charles and his personal adherents 
had rubbed off, by their friction with the men and the customs of 
other countries, much of that external shell of habits and manners 
which, if not the most valuable and essential part of patriotism, 
is yet an excellent protection and bond to the love of country. 
The exiled royalists too, no more than their "merry, poor, and 
scandalous" chief, could not be supposed to entertain feelings of 
very deep devotion to that country which had banished them for 
so long, and to which they were restored mainly through foreign 
interference and the intrigues of foreign jealousy; for it may 
safely be said that most of the nations of Europe had watched 
with envy and distrust the rapid career, so brilliant and so short, 
of republican England. 

In consideriug how far these circumstances were likely to affect 
the merely literary tastes and predilections of the restored court, 
we must not forget that the great productions of earlier and more 
splendid epochs of English literary history had grovvn obsolete, 
if not even unintelligible; for we tind Dryden, an ardent, if not 
very enlightened admirer of Shakspeare, complaining that the 
writings of the greatest of our dramatists had become little read 
from the difficulty and antiquated expression of his style. More- 
over, the English literature was at the period of which we are 
speaking absolutely unknown to the rest of Europe — a circum- 
stance for which it is easy enough to find a reason. The French 



CHAP. X.3 INFLUENCE OF FRENCH TASTE. 177 

nation was, at the epoch of Louis XIV., the one which had 
reached the highest point of civilization then attained by any Eu- 
ropean state : her influence, not only political and military, but 
even intellectual also, was predominant; she dictated the fashion, 
not only in all minor matters of dress, amusement, and behaviour, 
but in literature and art. Parisian practice, and the court of the 
Grand Monarque, was a jurisdiction from which there was no 
appeal, and its decisions were held to be equally irreversible, 
whether they settled the principles of poetry or the arrangement 
of a sword-knot, the laying out of a garden or the rules of the 
drama. Now, of all the European nations which have at any 
period of their existence attained to some degree of eminence in 
letters, France is incontestably the one which has the least catho- 
licity of taste, the least sympathy with what differs from her 
received ideas. This arises, in some measure, from the unity 
which characterises French society, and from the political causes 
which have always made Paris the centre and focus of French 
nationality. Some portion of the effect may have been produced, 
too, by the inherent poverty of the French language, and by the 
sudden and rapid progress which the literature made towards ex- 
cellence — the cultivation of the field being in direct proportion to 
the narrowness of its limits. Lastly, we must not omit from our 
calculation the restless and insatiable vanity which incontestably 
forms a prominent feature in the French character; and we can- 
not, we think, long wonder either at the industry and activity 
with which all the French critics maintained the supposed supe- 
riority of their national literature over that of every other Euro- 
pean country, or at the complete success which their efTorts so 
long secured. That, therefore, the English royalists should have 
returned from exile with all their predilections enlisted in favour 
of French literature, can be no matter of surprise to us. What 
could have been the opinion of a gay and ignorant cavalier respect- 
ing the ' Comus,' for instance, of Milton, or the 'Paradise Lost?' 
And if he could in no sense sympathise with or understand (as it 
was next to impossible that he could) the grave and profound 
loveliness which characterises the works of the great Puritan 
poet, how very dim and imperfect must have been his impressions 
of Chaucer, of Spenser, of Shakspeare ! The consequence of all 
this was, that there was introduced into England at the Restora- 
tion, not merely a difference of tone affecting the general character 
of the literature, but new models and new forms of composition. 
The court too, and the society of the metropolis, now began to 
exercise a more powerful influence, particularly on the lighter 
departments of literature ; and the manners of that court being 
exceedingly corrupt and profligate, a deeply-seated taint of im- 
morality was now communicated to the social intercourse of the 



178 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. X. 

age, which required no short period of time, and no small exertion 
of good taste, good manners, and religion, entirely to purge away. 
Indeed this corruption was not entirely eradicated, either from 
manners or from literature, till the time of Addison. The court 
thus giving the tone and key-note to the metropolis, and the me- 
tropolis to the nation, we cannot be surprised to see that a gay 
and witty profligacy characterises the lighter literature of this 
time ; and that a certain worldliness, and a perfect acquaintance 
•with the surface of fashionable society, should be the prevailing 
spirit of the day. The nation, disgusted with the long faces and 
longer prayers of the fanatics, and suddenly freed from their ab- 
surd and odious restrictions, now rushed to the opposite extreme : 
debauchery was considered as identified with loyalty, and oaths, 
and deep draughts, and a gay contempt for all the decencies of 
social life, were, as it were, the badges and insignia of a good 
cavalier. Men are but too apt in all cases to find pretexts for 
their vices in what is in itself laudable and excellent ; and in the 
present case the follies naturally accompanying the triumph of the 
royalist party were fostered and encouraged by the scandalous ex- 
ample of immorality set by the court itself. The king, to whom 
proscription and misfortune had taught neither gratitude nor pro- 
priety, who had returned from exile, like the members of another 
royal house in our own days, " without having learned and with- 
out having forgotten anything," appears to have possessed no one 
good quality but that of a certain good-natured easiness of temper; 
and his reign is equally memorable for internal disorder and for 
external weakness and pusillanimity. Now what are the literary 
features which such an epoch as we have been describing, and 
such a state of society, might naturally be expected to possess? 
Assuredly we should look for no great manifestations of creative 
genius, for no delineations of tragic passion, for no profound and 
immortal embodiments of human nature: but satire would flourish, 
and that kindred species of composition, the comedy of manners 
or intrigue — that satire (the Horatian, not the Juvenalian kind) 
which skims lightly over the surface of society, and rather wittily 
ridicules bad taste, bad manners, and folly, than sternly lashes 
vice or crime ; and that comedy which confines itself solely to 
the external absurdities of society, and therefore but a portrait or 
a caricature of a particular age: not the comedy which penetrates 
into the profoundest recesses of human character, representing in 
lively colours, not an epoch, but humanity itself. Tragedy they 
had, and in abundance; but it was a tragedy in the highest degree 
artificial — an exaggerated copy of the already exaggerated imita- 
tions of Corneille and of Racine. At a period when society had 
lost all real dignity of manner and all true intensity and earnest-, 
ness of tone, it had lost also all sympathy with natural feeling, 



CHAP. X.] DRYDEN : HIS LIFE AND WORKS. 179 

and all sense for simple passion: and as the convulsive distortions 
of weakness and disease may at first sight be mistaken for the 
activity of healthy vigour, the dramatic audiences of that time 
were content to accept fantastic extravagance for sublimity, and 
an effeminate affectation for tenderness. To sickly and enervated 
palates, simple food is tasteless and loathsome; and the unnatural 
rants of a false and impossible heroism were applauded by the 
countrymen of Shakspeare and of Jonson. This was the age of 
rhymed tragedies : in the eagerness to imitate the whole form and 
structure of the French classical tragedy, they copied not only 
what was unimportant, but also what was defective. They forgot 
that the English language possessed examples of the highest per- 
fection of harmony as a medium of dramatic dialogue; and they 
servilely followed the metrical system of their French models, a 
system essentially based upon the unmetrical character of the 
French language. Nor did they stop here: they found it neces- 
sary to copy also the artificial and exaggerated tone of the senti- 
ments, the supernatural and impossible elevation of the characters, 
and to throw over the whole composition the tint of courtly and 
fantastic gallantry, which accords so ill with the real manners of 
those epuclis (the heroic age of antiquity in particular), from 
which they generally selected the subject of their plays. Their 
heroes are no longer men and women, but glittering puppets, 
dressed up in a collection of contradictory virtues, placed upon 
the stage to declaim long tirades of artificial and exaggerated sen- 
timent: and, possessing no intrinsic claims on the sympathy of 
the spectator (for who can sympathise with a phantom — an ab- 
straction ?), they were represented as performing prodigies of 
impossible valour, and making sacrifices of not less impossible 
generosity. 

In this degenerate age, however, of our literature, England 
produced one man who, though deeply tinged with the stains of 
his age and country, yet deserved and obtained, by the innate 
nobility and grandeur of his genius, one of the highest places 
among the great men of his country. This was John Dryden. 
He was descended from an ancient Northamptonshire family, and 
was born in August, 1631. Though the father of the poet was a 
man of rigid Puritan principles, the future critic and satirist re- 
ceived a good and even learned education, first at Westminster 
School, and afterwards at Trinity College, Cambridge. Though 
his first poetical efforts were devoted to the celebration of the 
republican chief of England, he very soon utterly abandoned the- 
party and opinions of the Commonwealth, so uncongenial to the 
character and ambition of Dryden, who was essentially the poet 
of the court and of social life ; and we find him among those who 
welcomed with most enthusiasm the restoration of the monarchy. 



180 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. X. 

The stage being, as we have already intimated, the most fashion- 
able, and perhaps also the most lucrative arena for literary ambition 
at this time, Dryden became an industrious candidate for dramatic 
glory, and he now began that career of writing for the stage which 
continued with little interruption during his whole life. Among 
the first plays which he wrote are ' The Wild Gallant,' ' The 
Rival Ladies,' and ' The Indian Emperor;' but this department 
of his works it will be needless to particularize, as they are now 
little read, in spite of occasional passages of great merit, and even 
many noble scenes of a highly eloquent and declamatory cast. 
These remarks, however, apply solely to the tragedies, for Dryden, 
great as were his powers of satire, can hardly be said to have 
possessed a spark of humour ; and humour is the essence and 
life-blood of comedy. The truth is, that his comedies were 
"written less in compliance with the natural bent of his genius 
than to obey the taste of the day, and, like most men who do not 
possess the vis comica, he seems to have invariably mistaken 
Isuffoonery for comic wit, and coarse unblushing profligacy for 
comic intrigue. His comedies are, in short, equally stupid and 
contemptible, and it is but a melancholy excuse for the errors of 
such an intellect as Dryden's to allege the corruption of the society 
of his day, or the force of poverty, as palliating what is equally 
an offence against morality and good manners. In his tragedies 
there is much more to admire and far less to blame — a freedom 
and vigour of expression, a masculine energy of thought, and an 
inexhaustible flow of the purest English, harmonized by a ver- 
sification- which, for ease, abundance, richness, and variety, has 
never been equalled in the language. The characters in his 
dramas are all reproductions of the scanty repertory of the French 
scene; his heroes push courage and generosity to the verge of 
madness and impossibility ; his heroines are little else than eloquent 
viragos; and each class of personages has a tinge of the fantastic 
and exaggerated gallantry which had its origin in the system of 
chivalry, and which was carried to its highest degree of absurdity 
in the interminable romances of the school of Scuderi; and his 
tyrants rant and blnspheme, sccimdimi artem, in sounding tirades 
which nothing could render tolerable but the sonorous and majes- 
tic versification. The truth is, that the genius of this great poet 
was essentially undramatic. As he wanted all perception of true 
humour in comedy, so in tragedy he was completely deficient in 
that sentiment (so nearly akin to humour) without which tragedy 
becomes nothing but declamation in dialogue — pathos. But his 
real sphere was lyric, didactic, and satiric poetry, and in these 
kinds of writing the qualities which we have described him as 
possessing — perhaps no poet ever possessed them in so high a 
degree — shine out in full and unmingled lusture. In 1667 he pub- 



CHAP. X.] ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 181 

lished ' Annus Mirabilis,' a poem of considerable length, written 
to commemorate the events of the preceding year, which were 
indeed remarkable enough to justify the title; — among the rest, 
the great fire of London, and a desperate action between the 
Dutch and English fleets. In this noble work he made use of a 
species of versification (imitated, it is supposed, from Davenant) 
which was peculiarly qualified to exhibit his mastery over the 
language, and his consummate power of expressing ordinary 
thoughts in varied and majestic numbers. It is written in stanzas 
of four heroic lines, alternately rhymed, and, though deformed 
by occasional false thoughts and extravagances, by marks of haste 
and hurry, and injured (as are most of Dry den's compositions) 
by a tone of adulation and flattery unworthy a great man, it must 
ever be considered a work of extraordinary merit. The publi- 
cation of this vigorous work immediately placed Dryden in the 
first rank of the poets of his time; and he made an engagement 
with the king's players to supply them with three plays a-year 
— a task for which he possessed few qualifications excepting a 
remarkable boldness and prolific fluency of mind, and an inex- 
haustible supply of rich and varied versification. He was about 
this period appointed poet laureate and historiographer to the 
king, which office, together with his share in the profits of tlie 
theatre, amounting to about 300/. a-year, afforded him a fixed 
revenue of at least 700/. This must be considered as the most 
prosperous and flourishing period of Dryden's existence; but he 
soon became involved in controversies and squabbles with other 
literary men, and particularly with Elkanah Settle, a wretched 
scribbler of that day, placed in opposition to Dryden partly by 
the bad taste of the time, and partly by the ingenious malice of 
the witty and profligate Rochester. These literary quarrels em- 
bittered the life of the great poet; and though we may in some 
sense be said to owe to them several of the finest satiric produc- 
tions of Dryden's muse, we cannot but regret that his powerful 
energies were in so many instances unworthily employed in 
consigning to an immortality of scorn names which but for him 
would have been long forgotten, and thus embalming in the bril- 
liant and indestructible amber of his satire the lice and beetles of 
contemporary literature. 

In 1681 Dryden published the splendid satirical poem of 'Ab- 
salom and Achitophel.' In this noble production, under a thin 
and transparent veil of Biblical names and Scriptural allusions, we 
have a most powerful description of the political intrigues of the 
Duke of Monmouth and his party, and admirably drawn charac- 
ters of the principal public men of that time; indeed, it is the 
force, variety, and comprehensiveness of the characters wliich 
give the work its value in the eyes of modern readers — a value 
16 



183 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. X. 

' which it can never lose. In satire it is obvious that a degree of 
epigrammatic point in the delineation of characters is as essential 
an excellence as the same quality of brilliant discriminative op- 
position would be a defect in the drama or in the romance ; and 
thus Dryden's admirable skill in this kind of moral portrait-paint- 
ing absolutely rendered his dramatic personages mere abstractions, 
rather artificial combinations of distinct qualities than real human 
beings. Not even in the elegant gallery of the Horatian satire, 
nor in the darker and more tragic pictures of Juvenal, can we find 
any delineations, admirable though they be, equal in vigour, life- 
likeness, and intensity of colouring, to the rich and magnificent 
collection of portraits given in 'Absalom and Achitophel ;'-most 
of them have been impressed indelibly upon the memory of every 
reader of English poetry: we may mention, among others, the 
characters of Zimri (the Duke of Buckingham), of Achitophel 
(the Earl of Shaftesbury), of Corah (the infamous Gates), and in 
the second part the masterly descriptions of Settle and Shadwell, 
his chief personal and poetical antagonists, under the names of 
Doeg and Og. It should be remarked, that the second part of 
this striking poem was written, not by Dryden himself, but by 
Tate under his direction, and that the former's share in it (with 
the exception of " several touches in other places") was confined 
to the two latter characters. It is, however, but just to the much 
calumniated genius of Tate to say, that his part of the poem is 
not unworthy of his great collaborator, and that his style is hardly 
to be distinguished, in this work, from that of the master. It is 
true that we know not how far the pencil of Dryden may have 
left its powerful touches on the canvass of the inferior artist. This 
Avork, like all Dryden's satires, narrative compositions, and the 
dialogue of his tragedies, is written in the rhymed heroic couplet 
often syllables : a measure which Dryden must be considered as 
having carried to the highest perfection of which it was capable. 
It is a species of versification exceedingly difficult to write with 
effect, particularly in a long composition, the structure of this 
metrical system causing a tendency to complete the sense at the 
end of each pair of lines or couplet, and thus being peculiarly 
liable to degenerate into monotony. But Dryden, by a diligent 
study of the great models in this kind of versification, and par- 
ticularly of the works of Chaucer (one of the most harmonious of 
our poets), learned to surpass all who had gone before him in the 
qualities of vigour, sonorousness, and variety ; and he knew how, 
by the occasional introduction of a triplet (or three lines rhyming 
together) and the skilful use of the Alexandrine (of twelve sylla- 
bles) at the end of a paragraph, to break the uniformity of the 
couplet, and to give to his versification that 



CHAP. X.] dryden's controversial poems, 183 

" Long-resounding march, and energy divine," 

which is the peculiar characteristic of his poetry. 

He possessed in a higher degree than all our other poets, as 
Johnson justly remarks, the "art of reasoning in verse," and he 
well knew that he possessed this rare faculty: his mind was 
rather ratiocinative than impressionable ; he possessed but feeble 
sympathy with nature, and no tenderness at all ; in poetical argu- 
ment, therefore, in invective, in the delineation of characters of 
artificial life, he was inimitable. Nor was he less impressive in 
a higher sphere — that of moral or religious controversy — what 
may be called poetical polemics. He has left us two noble works 
of this nature, the ' Religio Laici,' and 'The Hind and Panther,' 
— works which neither the unpoetical nature of their subjects, nor 
the occasional false reasonings and sophistries which may be de- 
tected in them, can prevent us from considering as among the 
noblest eflbrts of human intellect ever embodied in majestic verse. 
The first is a defence of the Church of England against the Dis- 
senters ; and in spite of the local nature of its theme, and the tone 
of scepticism as to revealed religion which is but too perceptible 
in many parts, it contains passages in the highest strain of Dry- 
den's peculiar excellences. The other is an attempt made by 
Dryden to justif}^ under the form of a fable, his recent secession 
from the English Church which he had so powerfully defended, 
and whose dogmas he now relinquished for those of Romanism. 
This event took place about the period of the accession of James 
H., and Dryden was exposed in consequence to great obloquy, — 
his conversion being attributed, and with no small show of justice, 
to motives of interest. Nothing can be more absurd and unarti- 
ficial than the outline and conduct of this fable ; in which the 
principal doctrines of religious politics are discussed by animals, 
and the chief sects into which the Christian world is divided are 
represented under the guise of various wild beasts. In the 
masquerade of 

" A milk-white hind, immortal and unchanged," 

the poet means to present the Roman Catholic Church : in that 
of the Panther, the other interlocutor in this polemical dialogue, 
the Church of England, depicted as a beautiful but not unspotted 
creature : — 

" The panther, sure the noblest next the hind, 
The fairest creature of the spotted kind, — 
Oh, could her inborn stains be wash'd away. 
She were too good to be a beast of prey, — 
How can I praise or blame, and not offend ? 
Or how divide the frailty from the friend 1 
Her faults and virtues lie so niix'd, that she 
Nor wholly stands condemn'd, nor wholly free." 



184 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. X. 

Under the other animals are expressed the other sects ; and in the 
portraits of many of them we recognise Dryden's usual vigour 
and compression of thought. We may specify in particular the 
Bear and the Wolf, the Presbyterians and Independents, which 
are touched with a master's hand. We may remark in this noble 
work, as in all that Dryden ever wrote, a multitude of those terse 
and happy expressions which, like the glances in the modern }>oet, 
are 

" New, as if brought from other spheres, 
Yet welcome, as if known for years ;" 

as for instance when Dryden speaks of the "winged wounds." 

We now approach the latter part of Dryden's life, a period 
when the sun of prosperity, which had thrown a transient glow 
of well-being over his career, was to set, and leave the great poet 
to finish his day in gloom, poverty, and unrequited labour. 

At the Revolution, in 1688, he lost his office of laureate, and 
the remainder of his life was passed in unremitting toil. But no 
diminution of splendour or intensity is perceptible in the lustre of 
"this mighty orb of song;" and his great powers seem to acquire 
new vigour and activity with his declining age and his decreasing 
fortunes. His latest works are esteemed his best; and it seems 
to furnish us with an irresistible proof (if such were needed by 
those who remember the life of Milton) of the elastic and uncon- 
querable spirit of the higher order of genius. Dryden now un- 
dertook the mighty task of translating Virgil — a task for which it 
cannot be denied he was peculiarly unfitted, not only by the cha- 
racter of his mind, but by the nature of his previous productions. 
Of all the classical poets, Virgil is the one whose prevailing and 
most prominent merit is exquisite delicacy of thought and expres- 
sion ; a quality which Dryden, partly from want of sympathy, 
partly perhaps also from the rapidity with which he usually wrote, 
was in no way likely either to appreciate or to reproduce. His 
translation, therefore, though valuable as retaining many of the ex- 
cellences of the English poet, can hardly be considered a faithful 
representation of the Roman bard : it is Dryden, and often Dryden 
in high perfection, but it is seldom or never Virgil. 

Among the finest compositions of his latter years, we must 
now mention the Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, a lyric composition 
of the elevated and elaborate character, which is absolutely un- 
equalled in the English language, and approaches nearer to the 
true tone of ancient lyric jDoetry than any modern production. 
Its subject is the power of music, which is most happily illus- 
trated and described in the succession of diflerent passions and 
sentiments supposed to be excited by Timotheus, in the mind 
of Alexander, feasting, a triumphant conqueror, in Persepolis. 
Pride, joy, pity^Iove, terror, and revenge, are successively evoked 



CHAP. X.] dryden's fables. 185 

by the magic of the "mighty master," and chase each other, like 
sun and shade along a mountain side, over the conqueror's heart. 
All these passions, it is true, are not described witii equal felicity 
or equal taste ; but minor defects are forgotten in the majestic 
movements, now gay and now sublime, of Dryden's versification. 
It reminds the reader of some grand and elaborate concerto of 
Beethoven, in which the softest airs and the most complex har- 
monies alternate with grand bursts of wild tempest-music, and 
swelling strains of lamentation or of triumph, like the grief 
or the joy of some whole people. Dryden wrote another ode 
of great but inferior excellence, a funeral lyric on the death of 
Anne Killigrew; but this latter is injured in its eflect by various 
passages rather ingenious and fantastic than either pathetic or 
sublime. 

His last work of any importance was his 'Fables,' a collection 
of narrative and romantic poems, chiefly modernised from Chaucer 
or versified from Boccaccio. In these his genius appears in all 
its plenitude of splendour; and nothing can exceed in intensity 
the impression they make upon the reader of the poet's consum- 
mate mastery over the whole mechanism of his language and 
versification, and a peculiar air of conscious power which, though 
it strongly characterises all Dryden's compositions, is in none of 
ihem so conspicuous as in these. 

We must not forget the deep debt of gratitude which the modern 
English literature owes to Dryden, were it only for his having in 
his fables disinterred for his countrymen the rich stores of poetry 
concealed in the then obsolete and unread pages of Chaucer, and 
thus prepared the way for a renewed and more reverential study 
of the admirable productions of our elder writers. If Dryden 
had done no more than this, he would have done an inestimal)le 
service to the literature of his country ; and we should have been 
at a loss to speak with sufficient respect of a man all whose 
earlier works are in their general character so widely different in 
feeling and spirit from the productions of the Middle Ages, and 
who yet had sufficient taste and discernment, though living in an 
age when these works were almost completely unread, and per- 
haps confounded in one sweeping accusation of unintelligible 
barbarism, to perceive their beauties, and to disencumber them of 
the dust and cobwebs of two hundred years. But the fables of 
Dyden are not by any means to be considered as mere imitations 
or modernisings of Chaucer; they have a character intrinsically 
their own, and they might be read with great advantage together 
with the originals. Of course the simplicity of the old poet, the 
sly grace of his language, that exquisite tone of naivete, which, 
like the lispings of infancy, gives such a charm to the early 
literature of almost every country, the direct and simple pathos 

16* 



180 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. X. 

coming directly from and going as directly to the heart — all this 
is wanting in the imitations of Dryden; and it is questionable 
whether, even if he had felt and sympathised with these qualities 
of his original (qualities possessed by almost all early poets, and 
most peculiarly by Chaucer), the process of transfusion into more 
modern language would not have evaporated this aroma of anti- 
quity: for a modern poet, not inferior to Dryden in genius, and 
certainly superior to him in reverential admiration of Chaucer, has 
confessed his complete failure in the attempt to modernise these 
delightful works without thus losing their bouquet. But what 
he wants in tenderness Dryden amply makes up in grandeur, 
in variety of diction, and in richness of metrical arrangement. 
Among the finest of these tales are the admirable stories of Pala- 
mon and Arcite, Cymon and Iphigenia, January and May, and 
Theodore and Honoria. The besetting sin of Dryden was the 
vice of his age — licentiousness; a defect which stains this no less 
than his other works. Chaucer is sometimes coarse and plain- 
spoken, but he is never immoral; his indelicacies are less in the 
idea than in the language, and arise less from any native pruriency 
in the poet's mind than from the comparative rudeness and sim- 
plicity of his age : Dryden's, we must confess with sorrow and 
humiliation, are deliberate and most reprehensible administerings 
to the base profligacy of a corrupted society. In these tales, 
many of which are distinguished, in the original of Chaucer or 
Boccaccio, for deep and simple patho's, Dryden shows his usual 
insensibility to the softer and tenderer emotions. His love is 
little else tlian the physical or sensual passion, and he signally 
fails in exciting pity. Of this latter remark we shall find abund- 
ant proofs ; we need only mention the weak and cold painting, 
in Dryden, of the dying scene in Palamon and Arcite — a scene 
which, in Chaucer, it is scarcely possible to read without tears. 

Dryden's prose is such as such a man might naturally be ex- 
pected to write. It is careless, hasty, and unequal, but vigorous 
and idiomatic to the highest degree. His unversified compositions 
consist chiefly of dedications and prefaces. The former was a 
species of necessary accompaniment to every book at a time when 
the literary profession occupied a much lower place in the scale 
of society than it has since attained. It is humiliating to think 
of the greatest genius and intellect thus begging, in a strain of 
adulation only the more fulsome as the more elegant, the patron- 
age of some obscure great man to works which were destined to 
immortalise theage which produced them, and to form the brightest 
ornament of the country which gave tliem birth. How painful 
to see them thus selling their precedency and birthright for " a 
piece of silver," and stimulating the niggard bounty of a patron 
M'ith tlio highest refinements of intellectual flattery ! But this de- 



CHAP. X.J DRYDEN's prose WORKS. 187 

plorable sacrifice of independence literature is no longer compelled 
to make, — 

"Tiie struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide. 
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, 
To heap the shrine of luxury and pride 

With incense kindled at the Muse's flame." 

These dedications in most cases are absolute models of elegance 
and style; so much so that in reading them one almost forgets 
the grossness of the adulation they convey. In the prefaces, 
which were generally treatises on various departments of poetry, 
or critical essays on the characters of poets, Dryden has established 
for himself a claim, not only to the glory of being one of the most 
nervous and idiomatic writers in the language, but also to that of 
having been the first to write in English anything that deserves 
the appellation of liberal and comprehensive criticism. These 
prefaces were in general composed with no higher object than 
that of swelling the size, and consequenUy augmenting the price, 
of the pamphlet or volume to which they were appended ; and 
though written to all appearance very rapidly and carelessly, these 
essays frequently contain the first germs or outlines of a true 
judgment respecting the merit of ancient or modern authors, and 
remarks, equally solid and original, concerning many important 
departments of literature. That Dryden's literary creed is not 
always orthodox, nor his opinions always tenable, can be matter 
neither of astonishment nor animadversion; for we must remem- 
ber that he lived when the fundamental principles of criticism 
were not yet established, and that he was the first English labourer 
who drove a plough into that rich and fertile field which was 
destined to be so assiduo-usly cultivated. In some of these com- 
positions he has given us short but masterly sketches of many of 
our older authors, whose works, when Dryden wrote, were either 
not read at all, or were quoted with a species of disparaging and 
half-contemptuous approbation. He deserves, therefore, and he 
will obtain, everlasting glory for the justice which he has so nobly 
rendered to the merits of our elder dramatists — authors with 
whose peculiar excellences he could have hardly been expected 
{a priori) to feel any very deep sympathy, and whom the fashion 
of his age had apparently consigned to oblivion ; and a still higher 
degree of applause must be assigned to him for the noble testi- 
mony he has borne to the transcendent merit of Milton, an author 
whose works it must have been, were it only from political mo- 
tives, unfashionable, if not even dangerous to praise- 
In the brief account which we have given of the numerous and 
varied productions of this great man, we think we have omitted 
few of any importance, if we except his translation, or rather 
paraphrase, of tlie satires of Juvenal and Persius, and his imita- 



188 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. LcHAP. X. 

tions of the epistles of Horace, There was so much resemblance 
between the personal and literary characters of Dryden and Ju- 
venal, that we should expect to find in the English poet a perfect 
reproduction, not only of the matter, but of the manner, of the 
Roman Bard. And we shall not be disappointed. The declama- 
tory boldness, mingled with frequent touches of sarcastic humour ; 
the rhetorical gravity, relieved by a kind of stern mirth ; the in- 
exhaustible richness of invective ; and the condensed weiglit of 
moral precept; all these were qualities which Dryden's moral 
poetry possesses of itself; he had not to go out of his own man- 
ner to be a perfect representative of Juvenal. This is amply 
proved by his own satire entitled Mac-Flecknoe, perhaps the 
most vehement, rich, and varied piece of invective in which per- 
sonal hatred and contempt ever borrowed the language of moral 
or literary reprobation. It is chiefly directed against Shadwell, 
whom he represents, in a kind of mock-heroic allegory, admira- 
ble for its boldness and vivacity, as the successful candidate for 
the crown of stupidity, left vacant by the abdication of Flecknoe, 
a wretched poetaster of that day, and whose Irish origin is wittily 
indicated in the name il/«c-Flecknoe conferred upon his worthy 
successor. This poem is " the sublime of personal satire :" the 
lines seem to flow on, burning bright, and irresistible, like the 
flood of lava bursting from the crater of the volcano, withering, 
crushing, and blasting all that approach it. 

Dryden died in comparative poverty, though universally placed 
by all his contemporaries at the head of the poets of his age, a 
position which his name will ever continue to retain. This event 
took place on the first of May, 1700, and his remains were buried 
with great pomp in Westminster Abbey. The expense of his 
funeral was defrayed by a public subscription, and a monument 
was afterwards erected in his honour by the Duke of Bucking- 
ham, intended to bear the following dignified and laconic inscrip- 
tion — 

" This SlieiTield raised : the sacred dust below 

Was Dryden once. The rest, who does not know ?" 



CHAP. XI.] clarendon: his life. 189 



CHAPTER XI. 



CLARENDON, BUNYAN, AND LOCKE. 



Clarendon's Life — History of the Rebellion — Characters — John Bunyan — The 
Pilgrim's Progress — Allegory — Style — Life of Bunyan — LocI<e — The New 
Philosophy — Practical Character of Locke's Works — Life — Letters on Tolera- 
tion — Essay on the Human Understanding — Theory of Ideas — Treatises on 
Government — Essays on Education. 

In the same manner as the external character of the scenery of 
any country is reflected in the fine arts which flourish there, do 
the great and stirring periods of history tend to produce the talent 
by which alone they can be worthily commemorated and de- 
scribed : the savage grandeur of the Calabrian mountains and the 
sunny loveliness of the plains of Roniagna are not more cer- 
tainly the suggestive cause of Salvator's wild sublimity or Claude's 
romantic grace, than the rout of Xerxes was of the patriotic 
fervour of the ^Eschylean tragedy, or the Peloponnesian War of 
the profound political philosophy of Thucydides. We cannot 
therefore wonder that the great Civil War in England, the Re- 
public, the Protectorate, and the Restoration — a period so crowded 
with events, and so full of intense dramatic interest — should have 
produced a historian worthy of describing the mighty revolutions 
which were to exercise so extensive and enduring an influence 
upon the future fortunes of Great Britain. 

These events were sufBcienUy striking and important to have 
inspired even an ordinary intellect : a narration tolerably faithful 
and detailed, and executed by a common hand, could not fail to 
possess a strong and lasting interest. How fortunate are we, then, 
to have a history of this busy period, executed by a man not only 
endowed with extraordinary powers of intellect, but one who was 
himself a principal actor in the occurrences he describes ! Tliis 
•was Edward Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon and Lord 
Chancellor of England. His work is invaluable for more reasons 
than one. It contains a minute account of a period of peculiar 
importance in the constitutional history of the country, was the 
production of a distinguished lawyer and statesman, himself in a 
position to enjoy unusual opportunities for obtaining accurate and 
extensive information, and personally acquainted with many of 
the most distiiiguished men of the time ; it is much more free 
from partiality and prejudice than could be reasonably expected 



190 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XT. 

under the circumstances, and is, above all, written in that easy 
and colloquial style which is best adapted to recount the events, 
without depriving them of their natural power of interesting and 
amusing the reader. Hyde was born in 1608, and, after study- 
ing at Oxford, devoted himself to the profession of the law, in 
which he soon distinguished himself so far as to attract the notice 
of the famous Laud. Being a man of considerable fortune, he 
now abandoned (in 1640) the practice of his profession, entered 
parliament, and commenced a political and literary career. He 
appears, after some hesitation, to have joined the royalist party, 
and became one of the most wise and trusty advisers of the un- 
fortunate monarch, whose contentions with his parliament and 
people were so soon to end in the destruction of his throne, the 
loss of his life, and the expatriation of his family. Though pro- 
fessing monarchic and constitutional opinions, Hyde never pushed 
them to that pitch of extravagance which caused the temporary 
ruin of the monarchy; and if the vacillating and infatuated Charles 
had yielded to the advice of his moderate and sensible minister, 
the fatal catastrophe might perhaps have been avoided ; for the 
English people has ever been distinguished, as a body, for its firm 
attachment to monarchical institutions ; its cry has been, in all 
ages, when its true sentiments have been able to secure free ex- 
pression, that of the barons of King John — " Nolumus leges 
Anglia3 mutari." But it was not to be so in the present instance : 
Charles I. was destined to pursue the fatal path traced out for 
him by a mistaken (however sincere) notion of his own preroga- 
tive ; the nation was to be precipitated into twenty years of blood- 
shed and tyranny, and Providence was to give a terrible lesson to 
all infatuated kings and to all rebellious peoples. Hyde, who 
had been made Chancellor of the Exchequer, and raised to the 
dignity of knighthood, now quitted the king at Oxford, and ac- 
companied Prince Charles to the west of England, and afterwards 
to the island of Jersey, where he remained for two years, occu- 
pied in writing an account of the events in which he had been 
engaged. This was probably the happiest and most tranquil 
period of his life. In 1648 he again joined the prince in Hol- 
land, from whence he was sent to Madrid on a mission to the 
court of Spain. This embassy — the object of which was to in- 
duce Spain to interfere actively in behalf of the exiled house of 
Stuart — was totally ineffectual; so much so, indeed, that Hyde 
and his companions were ultimately ordered to quit the country. 
The subject of our remarks now rejoined his wife and family, 
•whom he had left at Antwerp ; and after passing some time there 
in extreme distress, and even destitution, he again returned to his 
unfortunate master, who was now at Paris. From this period 
till the Restoration, Hyde continued to perform for the royal exile 



CHAP. XI.] clarendon: his life. 191 

those services which none but a very wise and faithful adlierent 
could have rendered, which the carelessness, profligacy, and ex- 
travagance of the second Charles's character made so necessary, 
and which no gratitude could repay. He watched over the finan- 
cial affairs of the king and his ragged little court, gave continual 
advice, frequendy as unpalatable as it was wise, and keeping up 
by every means in his power the sometimes precarious harmony, 
and slUl more precarious respectability, of the little band of gen- 
tlemen who surrounded the king. Charles, to whom Hyde must 
have appeared in the light in which a dissipated youth of ruined 
family regards a severe but faithful steward, expressed his grati- 
tude to him by naming him Chancellor, a dignity which at that 
time was productive rather of danger and annoyance than either 
profit or power. At the Restoration he began to receive tlie solid 
and merited recompense for his services and privations. He was 
now the first officer of the crown, and had reached the highest 
dignity which a subject can attain. His daughter, by marrying 
the Duke of York, became closely allied to the royal family of 
England; and at the coronation, in 1661, Hyde was created Earl 
of Clarendon, and presented with 20,000/. For some time he 
continued to be one of the king's chief advisers ; and it is allowed 
by politicians of all parties that his counsels were distinguished 
for their sagacity and their moderation. But he soon began to 
incur the dislike not only of the court, but of the nation. The 
former were jealous of him for the severity of his morals, for his 
' opposition to the extravagance and profligacy of the times, which 
must have made Clarendon a perpetual contrast and reproach to 
the society of that day ; and the people, still in the fervour of 
loyalty, and probably jealous of the great wealth and aggrandise- 
ment of Hyde and his family, were but too apt to echo the sen- 
timents of the court. He was compelled to resign the Great Seal, 
and forced, by the ingratitude of the sovereign for whom he had 
done so much, to leave the country. He retired to France, where 
he employed the closing years of his life in composing his in- 
valuable history. He died in 1674. His 'History of the Great 
Rebellion' was written entirely from personal recollections, and 
in that style which is best adapted to relate personal recollections 
with effect. It is perfectly natural and easy; and thus the strange 
and romantic adventures of the king are recounted in a manner 
which not only renders them more impressive and amusing, but 
convinces the reader of the narrator's good faith and accuracy. 
Absolutely impartial in every case it is not, and it could not be ; 
but it has always been considered, and with justice, as the most 
faithful and comprehensive account we possess of the interesting 
events it commemorates. The style has some defects of prolixity 
and want of clearness ; but it is a work to which the reader re- 



192 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [^CHAP. XI. 

turns again and again with renewed pleasure and profit, not only 
from the immense mass of information it contains, but from the 
vigorous, sagacious, manly, and honourable tone of thought which 
pervades it. It abounds in minute and complete characters of 
public men. We are hardly apt to appreciate all the penetration 
displayed in these, as we consider them, in the reading, to be 
simply a recapitulation of the historian's observations ; and we 
do not at first perceive the quiet sagacity with which this great 
intellectual portrait-painter has concentrated his attention upon 
those traits which constitute the individuality of the subject, neg- 
lecting, or rather judiciously subduing, those features which are 
not so marked and characteristic. As, in examining the living 
likenesses of Titian and Vandyke, a spectator unacquainted with 
the practical details and practical difficulties of the art will find 
his impressions of the painter's genius absolutely weakened by 
the very ease and facility of the execution, so it may be said that 
the apparent naturalness and simplicity of Clarendon's narrative 
are apt at first to diminish our feeling of the difficulty of his task, 
and of the skill with which he has executed it. " Clarendon," 
says Hallam, " is excellence in everything that he has performed 
with care ; his characters are beautifully delineated ; his senti- 
ments have often a noble gravity, which the length of his periods, 
far too great in itself, seems to befit ; but in the general course of 
his narration he is negligent of grammar and perspicuity, with 
little choice of words, and therefore sometimes idiomatic without 
ease or elegance." 

Besides his excellent History, Clarendon has left us, not to 
speak of a great number of state papers, written in a manner sel- 
dom equalled for dignity and weight, a (e\v other works, several 
of which remained unpublished and unknown till a considerable 
time after his death, when they were printed, and have much 
contributed to establish his fame as a great writer, and as a wise 
and virtuous man. That which is likely to possess the most 
universal interest is a dissertation on the comparative happiness 
and usefulness of an active or a contemplative life. It is an irre- 
sistible argument in favour of the former: and Clarendon's own 
busy and patriotic' existence is a complete confirmation of the 
proposition maintained by his vigorous logic. 

We have more than once taken occasion to remark that in 
every sound, durable, and healthy literature, there will always be 
found a large number of illustrious names, of men sprung from 
the middle and lower, and even the humblest, ranks of society: 
and this phenomenon will be more frequent, obviously, in pro- 
portion as the literature in question is of a vaster and more all- 
embracing character, the expression of national sympathies and 
feelings, and speaking loudly and clearly to the national heart. 



CHAP. XI.] BUNYAN : PILGRIM's PROGRESS. 193 

To the glory of England it must be said, that the vernacular lite- 
rature of no civilized nation in ancient or modern times can 
show so long and so splended a list of men rising from the hum- 
bler classes of citizens, and eternising their own age and their 
country's greatness by triumphs of valour, of wisdom, and of 
genius. Among these, not the least remarkable is John Bunyan, 
whose career was as extraordinary as his origin was low, or as 
his productions are inimitable and original. There is perhaps 
hardly any European language which does not possess a version 
or a paraphrase of the ' Pilgrim's Progress' — that wonderful fic- 
tion, in which a religious allegory is conveyed with an effect ab- 
solutely heightened by the very qualities of style which at first 
sight we should consider would be most likely to injure its im- 
pressiveness, by an unequalled simplicity and even rudeness of 
language, and by a bold directness of metaphor and a fearless 
literalness of parable which no other work, we think, exhibits. 

The subject of this romance (for it partakes of the elements of 
romantic fiction) is a delineation of the trials, temptations, strug- 
gles, and ultimate triumph of a Christian, in his progress from a 
life of sin to eternal felicity, typified under the Golden City, or 
the New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse. These adventures are all 
parables; and the hero, Christian, his friends and enemies — in 
short, all the personages of the drama — are more or less of the same 
character, personifications of abstract qualities, the follies, the vices, 
the fears, the hopes, the virtues, and the failings of religious human- 
ity. So fiir we have nothing more than the ordinary materials of 
apologue and allegory. In wliat then consists the peculiar charm of 
this strange and original fiction — a charm which renders the rude 
pages of Bunyan as familiar and delightful to a child as they 
are attractive to the less impressionable mind of critical manhood ? 
It is the homely earnestness, the idiomatic vigour of the style ; 
it is the fearless straightforwardness of the conceptions, and the 
inexhaustible richness of imagery and adventure. Drawing all 
his materials from the Scriptures and from the vivid and intense 
recollections of his own spiritual career, the wonderful tinker 
seems to recount the adventures of his hero with a simple eager- 
ness and good faith which annihilate our consciousness of the 
intervention of a book between the author and the reader : we 
seem to be sitting beside him as he labours at his " tagged laces" 
in the jail of Bedford, and we listen with the willing attention 
and the absorbing wonder of a child hearkening to its nurse's 
fairy-tale. Indeed, the very rudeness of the style, with its rough 
idiomaticism, its picturesque rustic earnestness, and the strong 
tinge of Scriptural phraseology, brings us involuntarily back to the 
age of infancy — the age of belief. In the painting of the mul- 
titude of characters which crowd the action of his strange drama, 
17 



194 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XI. 

we often mark vigorous strokes of observation, sagacity, and even 
humour. The adventures, too, are varied with a prodigality of 
conception which appears absohitely unbounded ; and though the 
primary idea of them is often little more than a bold embodiment 
of some Scriptural phrase or metaphor, yet the author seems, in 
spite of himself, to have perpetually brought them before us, and 
home to our senses as it were, by some unexpected and most 
picturesque touch of description, generally of that actual and 
material kind which forms so great a charm in popular legends. 
Like these latter productions, the episodes of Bunyan's Christian 
drama often possess a high degree of what we may call sim- 
ple ingenuity : they sometimes attain a true natural tenderness 
and beauty, and not unfrequently an unusual pitch of terrific 
grandeur and sublimity. What, for instance, can be more sim- 
ple and therefore more genuinely graceful than the pastoral pic- 
ture of the shepherds on the Delectable Mountains ; what more 
gloomy and more terrific than the Valley of the Shadow of Death ; 
what more natural, lively, and dramatic than the dialogues with 
Mr. Hopeful, Mr. Greatheart, and Mr. Littlefaith? 

The impressiveness of Bunyan resembles that of the old wood- 
cuts executed in the infancy of the art of engraving: there is in 
both cases a rude vigour and homeliness of outline, a strange igno- 
rance of costume, and a powerful tendency to realise even the 
most abstract things by connecting them with the ordinary details 
of everyday life ; there is also the same earnest intensity of pur- 
pose, and incessant struggle to bring the objects within the corn- 
prehension of the uncultivated minds to which the work was 
addressed. Above all there is visible, in the rude woodcut of the 
old German artist, as in the hardly less rude narrative morality 
of the English tinker, the unmistakable and inimitable originality 
of genius. It is this quality which prevents the style of Bunyan, 
though often coarse, from ever being vulgar. Southey has ex- 
cellently remarked, in his preface to the ' Pilgrim's Progress,' 
"His is a homespun style, not a manufactured one; and what a 
dilFerence is there between its homeliness and the fiippant vul- 
garity of the Roger L'Estrange and Tom Brown school! If it 
is not a well of English undefiled, to which the poet as well as 
the philologer must repair if tliey would drink of the living waters, 
it is a clear stream of current English, the vernacular speech of 
his age — sometimes, indeed, in its rusticity and coarseness, but 
always in its plainness and its strength. To this natural style 
Bunyan is in some degree beholden for his general popularity ; 
his language is everywhere level to the most ignorant reader and 
to the meanest capacity; there is a homely reality about it; a 
nursery tale is not more intelligible, in its manner of narration, 
to a child." 



CHAP. XI.] bunyan: his life. 195 

In speaking of the causes of the extraordinary attraction which 
this book possesses, particularly to the young-, we must not forget 
the immense command which Bunyan had over the whole vast 
store of Scripture language and imagery. He was emphatically 
a man of one book, a circumstance which was of itself almost 
sufficient to give his mind and productions a stamp of sincerity, 
originality and force. He is a man of one book, and that book 
was the best. It was religion which first raised Bunyan from 
the slough of coarse indulgences and brutal ignorance in which, 
as he relates in his strange autobiography, he was plunged during 
the early part of his life : it was religion that first stirred up the 
depths of his honest and enthusiastic soul, and taught him to 
think as well as to feel: and much as his fanaticism (which was 
undoubtedly in some degree extravagant, proportioned to the 
greatness of the change produced in him by the vivifying influ- 
ence of religious conviction acting on a powerful, imaginative, 
and uneducated character) may have exaggerated the extent of that 
transformation, we cannot wonder at his profound and incessant 
meditations on the instrument that produced it. 

His life may be recounted in a few words: he was the son of 
a tinker in Bedfordshire, and was born in 1628. Having acquired 
no education beyond reading and writing, he followed his father's 
less than humble occupation, and travelled about the country, in- 
dulging in all manner of profligate and sinful habits, among which 
that of swearing appears to have been perhaps the most repre- 
liensible, thougli he speaks himself with almost equal horror of 
his reprobate taste for dancing, ale-drinking, and bell-ringing. 
After liaving been awakened, as he himself imagined (as do all 
enthusiasts in a similar case), by a direct miraculous interposition 
of God, to a sense of his lost and wicked state, he appears to 
have gone through all the phases of transformation, from a care- 
less and debauched peasant — " Christopher Sly, old Sly's son 
of Burton-heath; by birth a pedler, by education a cardmaker, 
by transmutation a bearherd, and now by present profession a 
tinker" — into an eloquent and celebrated preacher, and an author 
of enduring reputation. His religious convictions having gradu- 
ally acquired consistence and certainty, he was admitted, in 1655, 
a member of the sect or congregation of Baptists ; and he in time 
became a distinguished spiritual leader of that society. In this 
position he remained for five years, when he fell under the pro- 
visions of the law enacted against various denominations of Dis- 
senters, and was imprisoned during twelve years in the jail of 
Bedford. Part of this long reclusion he employed in the com- 
position of his works, the principal of which are the singular and 
interesting autobiography to which we have more than once al- 
luded, and to which he gave the title of ' Grace Abounding to the 



196 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [ciIAP. XI. 

Chief of Sinners ;' the ' Pilgrim's Progress ;' and another religious 
romance or allegory, entitled ' The Holy War made by King 
Shaddai on Diabohis, for the regaining of the Metropolis of the 
World, or the losing and retaining of Mansoul." Under this last 
strange fanatical title it may easily be understood that we have a 
description of the Fall of Man, typified in the siege of tlie city of 
Mansoul, by Immanuel, the son of Shaddai or Jehovah, who ulti- 
mately retakes it from the usurper Diabolus, The ' Pilgrim's 
Progress' is divided into two parts, of which the first is by far the 
most striking, the latter exhibiting considerable marks of inferior 
originality and vivacity, and thus following the ordinary course of 
Second Parts and Continuations. The first part describes the ad- 
ventures of Christian in his pilgrimage to the Heavenly Jerusa- 
lem ; and the second goes over the same ground with a manifest 
and unavoidable diminution of interest, detailing the journey taken 
by the wife and children of Christian. 

In the manner of thinking, in the subjects selected by this singu- 
lar genius, no less than in the style by which he conveys his con- 
ceptions to the reader, we find innumerable traces of that enthusi- 
astical and fanatic spirit which was prevalent in England during 
the Civil War and the Republic, and which still characterises the 
opinions and the language of those numerous sects which dissent 
from the discipline and doctrines of the Church of England. It 
is an ardent, sincere, and active spirit, and, if not always very 
philosophical, very reasonable, or very charitable, we must re- 
member that it lias generally been lighted up and cherished by 
proscription and persecution, and consequently is generally found 
burning most brightly in the hearts of the obscure and the unedu- 
cated. It is not surprising, therefore, that the exclusive study of the 
Scriptures, and incessant meditation upon a topic so mysterious 
and so all-important as religion, should lead poor and ignorant 
and persecuted men first into enthusiasm and then into fanaticism 
and superstition, and make them fall into the error, so universal 
in all ages, of overrating the importance and misinterpreting the 
significance of their own internal sensations, and investing the 
phantoms of their own heated imagination in the sacred character 
of direct inspirations of God. 

Bunyan was liberated from prison by the generous and charita- 
ble interference of Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln, and continued to 
exercise his occupation of itinerant preacher till the proclamation 
of James II. appeared, recognising the right of the dissenting sects 
to liberty of conscience and worship. He then was enabled, with 
the assistance of several friends, to build a meeting-iiouse in Bed- 
ford, where he continued to preach with great and increasing re- 
putation, occasionally making visits to his brother nonconformists 
in London, until his death. This event took place in 1G88. Few 



CHAP. XI,] LOCKE: THE NEW PHILOSOPHY. 197 

of his numerous works are now read, with the exception of the 
'Pilgrim's Progress,' a book whose admirable originality will 
ever cause it to retain its place in English literature beside the 
'Robinson Crusoe' of De Foe, a fiction to which it bears in 
many points a very strong resemblance — a resemblance for which 
we shall endeavour to account in another place, when we come 
to speak of the last-named production. The two works are equally 
favourites with the young: they are read with equal interest, and 
remembered in after life by all who ever read them with equal 
tenacity. 

In speaking of the vast revolution brought about in philosophy 
by Bacon, we took occasion to remark how fortunate it was for 
his system, and for the future value of his writings, that their 
author should have been a man not theoretically alone, but also 
practically, acquainted with human affairs, and with the ordinary 
operations and general errors of the human mind. The distin- 
guishing quality of the New Philosophy is precisely this practical 
spirit; and whatever the speculations of science have lost in our 
later days in sublimity and abstracfness of tone has been more 
than compensated by their greater accuracy, usefulness, and fer- 
tility. And indeed this superior sublimity of ancient philosophy 
is much more in appearance than in reality; for the triumphs of 
modern science, if more modest in their form and mode of ac- 
quirement, are incomparably more solid and more productive; 
and a much truer and therefore sublimer idea of the grandeur and 
majesty of nature will be obtained from the calm and cautious 
experimentalism of modern days, than could be acquired from 
the bold but so often fallacious theorising of the ancient hypo- 
thetical and dogmatic method. Indeed it may be said that the 
older manner of philosophizing drew us rather to admire the 
genius and invention of the speculator, while the modern way 
leads us immediately to the contemplation of the subject of the 
speculation ; and fills us with admiration, not for the intellect dis- 
played in the investigation, but for the wonders of the department 
of nature which forms the subject of the inquiry. In this respect, 
therefore, whatever has been lost by the philosopher has been 
more than regained by philosophy. 

. Perhaps one of the most striking exemplifications of the Baco- 
nian method, in matter as well as in form, is to be found in the 
writings, so various and so important, of John Locke. Nor was 
there a less striking resemblance between many j)rincipal features 
of the personal and intellectual character of these two great men. 
They possessed, both of them, the spirit of the practical — the 
useful — in the very highest degree: they both declared incessant 
and unrelenting war against the spirit of obscurity and mystery, 
the host of arbitrary and technical forms, in which the subjects 

17* 



198 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XI. 

of their speculations had been obscured and enveloped by the 
scholastic philosophers : they were both the apostles and the high 
priests of common sense. 

Something of this plain and practical character — the Lutheran- 
ism of science — they possibly derived from their being themselves 
men personally versed in the real affairs of actual life: but we 
must not on this ground withhold our admiration for that courage, 
that rare and highest species of intellectual magnanimity, which 
enabled them to throw aside in the arena of philosophy all the 
imposing Init cumbrous panoply of systems and of scliools, and, 
like the Spartan, "grapple with glory naked" — with no arms but 
the vigour and (lexibiliiy of their own intellect. 

Locke was descended from an ancient and respectable family 
in Somersetshire, and was born in 1632. He was educated first 
a.t Westminster School, and afterwards at Christ Church College, 
Oxford, where he appears to have received that impulse in tlie 
direction of metaphysical and educational science which was 
afterwards to turn to such invaluable account. The years be- 
tween 1651 anil 1664 he spent at Oxford; and it was during 
this period that he seems first to have become convinced of the 
imperfection and sterility of the course of metaphysical study pur- 
sued in the university, a course which took Aristotle for its com- 
pass, chart, and pilot. He appears to have been peculiarly struck 
with the comparative inefiiciency of the old dogmatic method in 
the investigation of truth, and the insignificance of the results 
obtained by the employment of so cumbersome and complicated 
a mechanism. So great was his dissatisfaction, indeed, and so 
completel}^ convinced was he of the hopelessness of any true ac- 
quisitions being made in this path of study, and with so fallible 
a guide, that he renounced a university career for the profession 
of medicine, a study in which the application of the experimental 
method had produced such striking results and opened so vast 
and hopeful a career. This profession, however, for which the 
natural penetration and acuteness of Locke's mind so eminently 
fitted him, and which is so peculiarly founded on common sense 
and observation, he was soon obliged to renounce from ill health, 
and Ave find him, in 1664, secretary to Sir Walter Vane, in Ire- 
land, and sent by Charles H. on a diplomatic mission to Branden- 
burg. In the same year, 1664, Locke returned to Oxford, and 
was offered a considerable preferment in Ireland, provided he 
would enter the Church: this Locke declined to do, alleging for 
his refusal a reason the more honourable as it is rare — a want 
of that sentiment of peculiar vocation without which he justly 
thought no man ought to embrace the ecclesiastical career. In 
1666 our pliilosopher became^ acquainted wiili Ashley, Lord 
Sliaflesburv, a circumstance which brought him into fnmiliur inler- 



CHAP. XI,] LOCKE: HIS LIFE. LETTERS ON TOLERATION. 199 

course wilh many of the most distinguished intellects of the time. 
He became tutor to the son of his patron, and afterwards to his 
grandson — the famous Earl of Shaftesbury. 

In 1674 he went to France, and resided several years in that coun- 
try, principally at Paris and Montpelier ; probably acquiring and 
consolidating, by an intercourse with learned and enlightened men, 
those sound and generous, tolerant and rational ideas, which so 
strongly characterise his writings. Four years after tlii^, Shaftes- 
bury having been recalled to power for a short period, Locke 
returned to England, and on his patron's second political fall h'e 
retired with him to Holland, where he remained till he was re- 
called by the Revolution of 1088. It was during his stay here 
that Shaftesbury died (1683), and Locke appears to have alleviated 
his exile with a great variety of active intellectual occupation. 
He established, at Amsterdam, a species of literary society, in 
which assembled mnnv virtuous and learned men, chielly, like 
himself, exiles on religious and political grounds, who were then 
residing in Holland. 

While residing under the protection of Holland, that nursing 
mother of toleration, Locke produced his first important work, 
a work Avorthy of its subject; this was his 'Letter on Tolera- 
tion,' composed in Latin, and forming a solid and unanswerable 
argument in favour of religious freedom. This subject he further 
developed in three other Letters which successively appeared, and 
which were written in reply to the Oxford criticisms on the first 
Letter. In all these works he follows the same line as had been 
taken before, not only by Jeremy Taylor, but by so many of those 
ardent and acute Froleslants who had been driven from France 
and England into exile for the free expression of their opinions. 
At this time, as in all ages when despotism has prevailed, political 
and religious authority were falsely supposed to be similar in na- 
ture, and to rest upon the same foundations ; an error which has 
caused the greatest oppressions on the one hand, and the most ob- 
stinate resistance on the other. 

It may easily be conceived with what delight Locke must have 
liailed the Revolution of 1688, an event which not only restored 
him to his country and secured to him the free expression of his 
opinions on matters of church and state, but which was in itself a 
kind of practical embodiment of his own political convictions. 

But it was not till the year 1690 that the genius of Locke ap- 
peared in its full vigour. Hitherto he had been combating, as it 
were, on the outposts of the great battle of human happiness and 
true philosophy : he now attacked the main position of the hos- 
tile array of error and prescription. It was at this time that 
appeared his great work, the 'Essay'on the Human Understand- 
ing,' — a book the composition of which had been suggested, as he 



200 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XI. 

himself relates, by an accidental conversation, but the composition 
of which had occupied nearly eighteen years of inquiry and medi- 
tation. He relates that, having been once engaged with several 
of his friends in a discussion respecting some of the more abstract 
operations of the human mind, he had found that the argument 
began very soon to lose itself in the clouds of melaphysic uncer- 
tainty : and it tlien occurred to him, that no sound or true conclu- 
sions could be hoped for in such speculations until the nature of 
the human intellect itself had been, to a certain degree at least, 
examined and defined, and until some measure or limit had been 
established by which it could be approximately ascertained what 
ideas were really within tlie sphere of those operatix)ns, and what 
beyond them. Till this was done, it is plain, all argument re- 
specting the results would be premature, useless, and productive 
of nothing but confusion. It was, as we should recollect, one of 
the most important problems proposed by Bacon, as destined to 
form the basis of all real progress in knowledge, to ascertain what 
were the paths in which the human intellect could hope to advance 
safely aud profitably, and what were the reverse ; a question in 
no wise easy to resolve, and one which may form the subject of 
a special science hereafter to be investigated. 

One of the errors against which Locke is chiefly sedulous to 
warn the student is that mania for definition which in the older 
philosophy produces so fatal a tendency to substitute names for 
ideas. He had learned from Descartes the great principle of the 
impossibiUty of defining simple ideas, a principle the neglect or 
ignorance of which had substituted an endless word-catching for 
true productive investigation. ' The Essay on the Human Un- 
derstanding,' says Stewart, speaking particularly of the first two 
books, " is a precious accession to the theory of the human mind ; 
the richest contribution of well-observed afid well-described facts 
whicli was ever bequeathed by a single individual; and the indis- 
putable, tliough not always acknowledged, source of some of the 
most refined conclusions, with respect to the intellectual pheno- 
mena, which have since been brought to light by succeeding in- 
quirers." 

The leading doctrine of Locke is the double origin of our ideas, 
which are all to be traced to one of two sources, called by him 
sensation and reflection. This theory, beautiful and simple as 
it is, may be considered as little more than a diflerentand enlarged 
form for the non-existence of innate ideas in the human mind. 
Nothing is a more certain sign of imperfection either in physical 
or metaphysical science than the necessity for assigning a com- 
plex cause to simple phenomena; it is, in fact, of itself an ante- 
cedent improbability aflecting the validity of any theory ; and is, to 
a certain degree, an inversion of the usual order of nature, in which 



CHAP. XI.] ESSAY ON THE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 201 

we perpetually see a complex result produced by a simple cause, 
but very seldom a simple effect flowing from a complex cause. 
In the former part of his proposition, Locke has reached the highest 
degree of clearness and completeness ; namely, the investigation 
of those ideas which have their origin in sensation : in the latter 
part, or reflection, he has sometimes fallen into a certain degree 
of obscurity and contradiction ; but we have only to note the errors 
into which the greatest of preceding metaphysicians had fallen, 
some degrading the operations of the mind into mere material 
mechanism, and others refining them into a mystical and unin- 
telligible transcendentalism. His style and language are every- 
where clear, simple, and idiomatic to the highest degree; not 
always quite elegant, it is true, but invariably addressing itself 
directly to the understanding of a plain, cautious, and intelligent 
reader. It should be distinctly remembered that Locke is the 
steady and professed enemy of all scholastic and learned phrase- 
ology ; and perhaps the very skill witli which he has popularised 
his difficult and important subject may have tended to diminish 
our sense of the obligations which science owes to his name : he 
has himself often furnished us with arms which we have become 
so dextrous in using, that we forget they were not of our own 
invention — a fate which awaits almost all who have simplified 
human knowledge. 

That part of his work which has perhaps the greatest practical 
utility, and which gives this admirable author the strongest claim 
to our gratitude, is the portion devoted to guard against the imper- 
fections and the wrong use of words. And in this perhaps con- 
sists the peculiar originalit}'' of the work. In the older philosophy, 
which pursues the investigation of truth by the instrumentality of 
certain logical forms, as the syllogism, the inquirer is perpetually 
warned against fallacies proceeding from the incorrect use of these 
intellectual instruments ; but the older logic is always of a combat- 
ive or polemic character, and the reasoner is placed in the light 
of a gladiator, provided with offensive and defensive weapons, 
whose efforts are to be directed against an antagonist — a com- 
batant like himself. The older method, in short, enables us to 
overcome an opponent; but it is far less peculiarly qualified to 
enable us to conquer ourselves. 

The object of philosophy is certainly not the silencing of an 
antagonist, but the ascertaining of truth; and in pursuit of this 
last object we are infinitely more exposed to error from fallacies 
arising in our own minds — from our own passions, prejudices, 
and ignorance, than from anything exterior to ourselves. It was 
these passions, prejudices, and this ignorance and misapplication 
or loose employment of language, that perhaps the most valuable 
portion of Locke's Essay is intended to combat and overthrow. 



202 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XI. 

The necessity of doing this before any true progress could be 
hoped in metaphysical (or indeed in any) science was first clearly 
and powerfully urged by Bacon: he first showed the mighty sway 
over the human mind of those idols or prejudices which seem 
almost inherent in our nature: it was Locke who most triumph- 
antly overthrew their wide and fatal dominion. 

In 1690 Locke published his two ' Treatises on Civil Govern- 
ment,' which originally sprang out of his refutation of Sir Robert 
Filmer's once-celebrated book entitled ' Patri:archa,' an elaborate 
attempt to prove that the royal power is derived from the paternal 
authority, and is, consequently, like that species of rule from which 
it sprang, naturally unlimited. Filmer's proposition leads imme- 
diately to despotism, or rather to the impossibility of lawfully 
resisting, on the part of the people, the encroachments of des- 
potism. The refutation of Filmer is more particularly confined 
to the first part of Locke's essay, in which he treats the question 
of the original right and origin of monarchical power, and inquires 
into the foundation of that right. 

Having thus cleared the way, he proceeds to investigate and 
lay down the true principles on which he conceives all human 
society to be founded. He first discusses the state of nature, and 
the rights and obligations of men antecedent to the voluntary 
establishment of society. He then treats, in an admirable and 
conclusive manner, of the nature and rights of property, exhibiting 
in this part of his work a striking contrast to those authors whose 
useless subtleties and unnecessarily refined definitions had ob- 
scured a subject on which it is so indispensable for all men to 
form true and distinct conceptions. Labour he considers to con- 
stitute the true source of property, and to establish a natural and 
indefeasible right of the individual to the produce of his own 
exertions. He then traces the establishment of all government to 
the original or implied compact and consent of the members form- 
ing the primitive community, or by an uninterrupted adhesion of 
the members beginning from that period and remaining unbroken. 
In these i-easonings he chiefly follows the arguments of Hooker, 
in his ' Ecclesiastical Polity.' The remainder of the work goes 
on to develop Locke's ideas — all of them bold, and some few 
perhaps untenable — respecting the rights and principles of com- 
munities: and though he generally agrees with Hooker, whose 
noble treatise has left very little to future investigators, at least 
as far as the limited nature of its subject extends, it is impossible 
not to be profoundly struck with the clear, acute, solid, and simple 
manner of his reasonings, or with the vigorous, idiomatic, and 
unpedantic style in which the arguments are conveyed. 

This subject has been so fully and frequently discussed since 
Locke's time by men who have been able to throw upon it the 



CHAP. XI.] Locke's essay on education. 209 

light derived from practical experience of the real action of prin- 
ciples which in his time had only begun to be investigated in 
theory, that this work will perhaps in future be rather referred 
to than studied as embodying all the arguments and proofs addu- 
cible on this subject; but however this may be, this portion of 
Locke's works must ever be considered as sufficient of itself to 
place his name very high among the ablest expounders and the 
boldest defenders of human rights and liberties. 

In the next work which we have to notice he will be found ia 
a character not less worthy of our gratitude and respect: this is 
the ' Essay on Education.' " In this work," says Hallam, " which 
may be reckoned an introduction to that on tlie ' Conduct of the 
Understanding,' since the latter is but a scheme of that education 
an adult person should give himself, he has uttered, to say the 
least, more good sense on the subject than will be found in any pre- 
ceding writer. Locke was not like the pedants of his own or 
oilier ages, who think that to pour their wordy book-learning into 
the memory is the true discipline of childhood. The culture of 
the intellectual and moral faculties in their most extensive sense, 
the health of the body, the accomplishments which common 
utility or social custom has rendered valuable, enter into his idea 
of the best model of education, conjointly at least with any 
knowledge that can be imparted by books." 

Perhaps the most striking and not the least valuable peculiarity 
of Locke's treatise is the immense influence which he assigns in 
it to the power of habit in forming and modifying the characters 
of men. That he has a litde overstated and exaggerated the 
amount of this influence is incontestable, but we ought to remem- 
ber that the effects of such an error, if applied in practice, could 
only be innocent, if not even beneficial. It is, of course, an error 
into which the theorist on education is always peculiarly liable to 
fall, and one which hardly a single writer on the subject of educa- 
tion has altogether escaped. Locke had no personal opportuni- 
ties for studying, in the only way in which it can elfectually be 
siudied, the nature and characters of children. Those who have 
devoted themselves to this deeply interesting subject are unani- 
mous in their opinion that the characters of children will often be 
i'oimd, even where all external circumstances are as far as can 
be appreciated identically the same, to retain intrinsic differences 
which can only be explained by the supposition that there exist 
at every age of life many and important varieties of character and 
intellectual constitution, in modifying which, education, however 
great its power, is very inefficient, Locke's system of education 
has been by many condemned as unreasonably severe ; but those 
who complain of it siiould bear in mind tliat he never fliils to in- 
culcate the indispensable necessity of the feeling of disgrace as 



204 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XI. 

an element in all punishment and correction ; a condition which 
effectually excludes the possibility of undue severity on the part 
of the instructor: for the human mind has so instinctive an ap- 
preciation of what is just, that severity pushed beyond a certain 
limit would infallibly defeat its own object. 

Nothing can surpass the soundness and good sense displayed 
in the infinite multitude of minute observations respecting the 
])hysical, moral, and intellectual treatment of children, with which 
this excellent treatise abounds: so numerous, indeed, are they, 
and so valuable, that, though few branches of science have been 
more sedulously cultivated, particularly of late years, than educa- 
tion, the best writers on the subject would seem to have done 
little more than complete and extend the plan laid down by Locke, 
whose whole work "bespeaks an intense, though calm, love of 
truth and goodness; a quality which few have possessed more 
fully, or known so well how to exert, as this admirable phi- 
losopher." 

Besides these works, Locke was the author of an ' Essay on 
the Reasonableness of Christianity,' and also of two vindications 
of the last-mentioned production, which we shall not stop to 
analyse, as the nature of its subject places it rather in the de- 
partment of theology ; and also because his reputation is rather 
founded on the works wiiich we have noticed more at length. 

The 'Treatise on the Conduct of the Understanding,' to which 
we have more than once adverted as having been intended to form 
an introduction to his great work, did not appear till after his 
death. 

It is delightful to reflect that this great writer, whose mind was 
so acute and so vigorous, and wlio devoted all his energies to the 
furtherance of truth and goodness, was as amiable and venerable a 
man as he was an admirable author. His life was calm, happy, 
and laborious; and at his death, which happened in 1704, he left 
behind him, in his immortal works, a monument worthy of the 
conlinuer of Bacon, and of the friend of Newton. 



'. XII.] SCHOOL OF QUEEN ANNE. 205 



CHAPTER XII. 



THE WITS OF QUEEN ANNE. 



Artificial School — Pope's Early Studies — Pope compared to Dryden — Essay on 
Criticism — Rape of the Lock — Mock-heroic Poetry — Tehiple of Fame, &c. — 
Translation of Homer — Essay on Man — Miscellanies — The Dunciad — Satires 
and Epistles. Edward Young — English Melancholy — The Universal Passion 
—Night Thoughts— Young's Style— Wit. 

Poetry, in order to address itself with success to the sympa- 
thies of the reader, must necessarily speak the language of the 
class for which it is written ; and the more limited that class, the 
feebler, the more monotonous will be the accents of the poet. 
j Shakspeare wrote for all mankind ; and every human being, 
I whatever his age and country, will find in Shakspeare's works 
i matter of interest, of instruction, and delight. Pope and Swift 
wrote for an artificial and conventional society — not exclusively, 
it is true, for a court, but for what was then emphatically called 
the Town; and their writings speak the language not of the 
world, but of the city. The reader will find in them incessant 
strokes of worldly good sense and acuteness, a delicate and 
polished irony, a consummate neatness and distinctness of dic- 
tion ; but he will look in vain for any of the higher attributes of 
creative intellect: he will find a good deal of wit and ridicule ; 
but he will find neither true passion, true humanity, true pathos, 
nor true humour; for humour is to wit what the permanent, 
genial, and creative power of the galvanic pile is to the momentary 
and destructive shock of electricity; it is not the ray which daz- 
zles, but the heat which glows and animates. Thus wit is a 
quality immeasurably inferior to humour: indeed, humour is it- 
self the fulfilment and completion of wit, and the possession of 
the former quality necessarily implies the existence of the latter. 
Of mere wit, a single scene of Shakspeare often contains as 
much, scattered with a profuse and apparently unconscious hand, 
as would furnish forth whole libraries of the neat antithetic litera- 
ture of this period of Queen Anne: but in Shakspeare we remark 
not the wit, for its brilliancy is eclipsed by the much higher 
quality of humour; while in Pope or Swift or Addison the intel- 
lectual ingenuity appeals the more directly to our attention because 
it is unaccompanied by the higher quality. 
18 



206 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XII. 

At the head of this artificial school in poetry long remained 
Alexander Pope, born in 1688, and sprung, like so many of the 
most illustrious men of England, from the middle or citizen 
class. His constitutional ill health, and the weakness and de- 
formity of his frame, precluded him from pursuing any of the 
usual paths to distinction, and in a manner assisted in giving to 
his mind its poetical direction. A great part of his youth was 
spent in the green shades of Windsor Forest, where his father 
possessed a country-house. Under circumstances so favourable 
to the development of the intellect — solitude, forced sedentariness, 
and that delicacy of organisation which so often accompanies 
physical weakness — Pope very early gave earnest of his future 
poetical powers. Self-educated, of immense literary industry, 
and of a character singularly reflective and sensitive, he had ob- 
tained literary reputation of no mean value at a period of life 
when boys in general are thinking of little else than robbing or- 
chards and playing truant from school. Of this precocity of 
poetical development he often speaks himself: — 

" As yet a child, and all unknown to fame, 
I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came." 

At the age of sixteen Pope had already tried his strength in 
various attempts of different kinds of verse, among the rest in 
the drama — a species of writing for which his genius so little 
qualified him, that we have probably no reason to regret that his 
good sense induced him to destroy these youthful essays in scenic 
composition. Unsuccessful as he probably felt them to be, such 
attempts could not fail to strengthen and practise him in the art 
of expression, to educate his ear, and to give delicacy and variety 
to his versification. Like the young swallow, whose instinct 
informs it of the period of migration. Pope had already felt the 
mysterious call of genius ; and these uncertain efl^orts were but 
the hovering of the bird before it darts away upon its annual 
course — the balancing of the unpractised pinion, and the fixing 
of the yet untried flight. His first publication was a small col- 
lection of Pastorals, which as well as a number of imitations and 
translations of Chaucer, plainly indicated to the public that a new, . 
great, and original author was about to rise upon the literary 
horizon. A profound and venerating admirer of the genius of his 
great predecessor, Dryden, it is not surprising that Pope's first 
literary efforts should have been made in the same direction : 
his boyish admiration had been gratified by the approbation of 
the patriarch of poetry, and by his prediction of the young aco- 
lyte's future glory ; and it is no less natural that Pope's versifica- 
tion and style should be in some degree founded upon the prac- 
tice of his illustrious predecessor. But there were essential 



CHAP, xii.] pope: comparkd with drydex. 207 

differences between the manner of these two admirable writers- — 
differences which must be accurately appreciated ere we can 
hope to form a just idea of their respective merits. In Dryden, 
a vigorous, careless, self-assured dexterity is perceptible, not 
accompanied with much passion, it is true, nor with much depth 
of sentiment, appealing only to the more obvious and direct sym- 
pathies of the human character, but imposing from the conscious 
ease which it indicates. In Pope we observe a greater degree of 
thought and reflection, a more refined acnteness of remaric, and 
an almost fastidious neatness and polish of expression. Jiolh 
poets are remarkable for the quality of good sense, and both are 
admirable for perfect clearness and distinctness of meaning; and 
if they sometimes fall into truisms and commonplaces, these are 
generally such as in themselves involve principles whose im- 
portance will excuse their frequent repetition, and are so adorned 
by happiness of illustration, that we forget the insipidity of the 
precept in the beauty of the language in which it is clothed. 

Both poets are greater in the delineation of artificial life, in the 
analysis of human passions, human motives, and human conduct, 
than in the delineation of external nature, or the sympathy with 
unsophisticated humanity; but the force of Dryden rather consists 
in a kind of brave neglect of minuter shades of character, and a 
broad and manly touch of intellectual portrait-painting, while the 
figures of Pope are elaborated with the neat and discriminating 
delicacy of a pencil accurate without timidity, and distinct with- 
out coldness. Dryden is a Rubens, and Pope a Greuze or a 
Watteau. The peculiar species of versification — the rhymed 
couplet, so exquisitely adapted for satire and for moral dechima- 
tion — which Dryden had carried to so high a pitch of harmony, 
variety, and power, was destined to receive from his successor the 
last finish of which its structure was capable: in the hands of the 
former poet it is an instrument of infinite compass, energy, and 
strength ; beneath the touch of the latter it became much more 
limited, it is true, in variety of music, but exquisitely sensitive 
and delicate. Dryden frequently introduces the triplet, and oc- 
casionally the Alexandrine of twelve syllables, in order to wind 
I up the period with a burst of rolling and sonorous music. This 
j is an artifice much more sparingly employed by Pope. Indeed 
it may be said that this poet gave such perfection to the species 
! of verse which he generally employed, and which became the 
i popular and fashionable measure of his day, that the anatomy 
■ and prosodiacal structure of that kind of rhythm became at last 
familiar to the lowest class of writers, and the very excellence 
of Pope's verses furnished his rivals with the means of equalling 
him, at least as far as concerns the mechanical harmony of his 
metre. The rhymed couplet was balanced and polished and 



208 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XII. 

melodised, until its construction became a mere matter of dex- 
terity ; and it has been very justly observed that it is not always 
easy to distinguish — that is, in point of mere versification — be- 
tween the productions of Pope and the meanest efiusions of the 
most contemptible scribblers of his day. The couplet had been 
refined and elaborated into a feeble and timid propriety; the sense 
almost invariably ended with the second line; and tlie antithesis 
of sound and meaning between the two portions separated by the 
cccsura, which was considered so great an ornament, frequently 
degenerated into a mere verbal opposition — a distinction without 
a difference. From falling into these defects Pope was admirably 
secured by the acuteness and sagacity of his mind; he is emi- 
nently the poet of good sense and reason : and though it is per- 
liaps hardly fair to charge upon him the faults of his incompetent 
imitators, our conclusion will be that, in communicating an ex- 
quisite and almost effeminate grace to the measure which he used 
so well, he somewhat im[)aired its vigour and its llexibility. 

In 1711 Pope published his 'Essay on Criticism,' a poem 
which was received with a universal burst of admiration ; a 
feeling rendered stronger by the contrast between the author's 
age and the character of his production. Though the work of a 
young man not much more than twenty-one, this composition is 
no less remarkable for the finish of its style than for the ripe 
judgment which it displays, and the extent of reading and re- 
flection which it indicates. It cannot be denied that the principles 
of art to be gathered from this well-thought and brilliantly-ex- 
pressed work have little of that depth and comprehensiveness 
■which the modern study of aesthetic science has communicated to 
criticism : they hardly, in short, penetrate to the " root of the mat- 
ter ;" but, as far as they go (which is, indeed, farther than criti- 
cism had gone before Pope wrote), they leave nothing to be de- 
sired as true and sparkling thoughts dressed in the most appro- 
priate language. 

But as a noble production of Pope's genius, and perhaps the 
most happy example of a new and original idea executed in a 
perfectly felicitous manner, we must cite the mock-heroic narra- 
tive poem entitled the 'Rape of the Lock.' The occasion of its 
being written was the somewhat unjustifiable frolic of Lord Petre 
in stealing a lock of hair from Miss Arabella Fermor, one of the 
ornaments of the beau monde of the day. This rather familiar 
and cavalier piece of pleasantry produced a quarrel between the 
two families, and Pope composed his charming little poem " to 
laugh them together again," as he phrases it. In this object he 
was unsuccessful, it is said ; but the little mock-heroic epic, though 
it did not appease the disagreement to which it owed its origin, 
will secure for its author an immortality among his country's 



I HAP. xn.] pope: the rape of the lock. 209 

poets, so long as the language in which it is writlpn shall endure. 
'I'he poem is, as Addison justly characterised it, " merum sal — 
a delicious little thing." Like the ' Secchia Rapita' of Tassoni, 
which has preserved from oblivion the war whose insignificant 
origin it describes, ' The Rape of the Lock' will immortalise, by 
the mere force of grace and invention, things and persons other- 
wise entirely devoid of interest. The work, like the poem of 
Tassoni, or rather like the ' Lutrin' of Boileau, is written in that 
species of mock-heroic which describes trifling or contemptible 
events with the pompous elaboration of epic language. It is, iii 
fiict, a dwarf epic, with its involution of interest, its supernatural 
machinery of beings respectively favourable and adverse to the va- 
rious personages, its episodes, and its catastrophe. This species 
of poetry has been most cultivated among the Italians, a people 
wliose intense enjoyment of the ludicrous renders them peculiarly 
sonsitive to burlesque and discordant ideas, while the flexibiliiy 
:uid richness of their language — and particularly of some of its 
]irovincial dialects, as the Genoese, the Neapolitan, and the Ve- 
nitian — gives them a singular power of comic expression. Thus 
in the older Italian comedy, to which Moliere owed so much, 
there is a species of unconscious and almost infantine simplicity 
of language and dialect, which forms the most admirable and an- 
jiropriate vehicle for the ludicrous extravagance of the characters, 
and the sly shrewdness of the drollery. In comparing together 
tlie ' Lutrin' and the ' Rape of the Lock,' we think no critic could 
hesitate to give a most decided preference to the latter. In the 
first place, the sluggish sensuality, ignorance, and squabbling of a 
parcel of gorbellied priests, forms a much less attractive subject 
for the comic poet than the elegant frivolities of aristocratic so- 
ciety ; and in the second, the species of machinery (supernatural 
interference) employed by Pope — the exquisite fairy mythology 
of the sylphs and gnome which he found in the writings of Par- 
acelsus and the Rosicrucian philosophers — is infinitely more at- 
tractive, more elegant, more varied, more accordant with the 
character of the action, than the unreal impersonations of abstract 
qualities — as, for instance, in the celebrated episode of Slotli — • 
adopted by Boileau in the ' Lutrin.' In reading the Frenchman's 
mock-heroic, we are struck with the propriety, polish, and neat- 
ness of the language ; but we feel that the author is perpetually 
trenching upon the domain of satire — a territory which, though 
bordering upon the mock-heroic, " for thin partitions do their 
bounds divide," can never be entered by the mock-heroic poet 
without a loss of efl^ect ; for satire in its essence is tragic, and the 
moment the comic author forgets to smile he quits his appropri- 
ate character. ' The Rape of the Lock' is divided into five short 
books or cantos, with a delightful mimicry of epic regularity. In 

18* 



210 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XII. 

the first, after an appropriate invocation, the poet describes the 
breaking of day, the awaking of his fair lieroine, and the va- 
rious offices and powers of the sylphs — being the protectors of 
the fair. We have next an enumeration of the omens whicli pre- 
sage the catastrophe ; and a speech from Ariel, the guardian spirit 
of Belinda, warning her to admit into her breast no thoughts of 
beaux. The toilet is then described with a grace and refined 
elegance absolutely unequalled, we think, in comic poetry. In 
the second canto, the fair Belinda goes upon the water; and 
occasion is taken to describe the "adventurous Baron's" deter- 
mination to carry off the fatal lock or perish in the essay, with 
an account of the sacrificial ceremonies by which he propitiates 
the powers to aid him in his bold emprise. Next follows an ex- 
quisite description of the sylphs, and their desponding councils; 
among them Ariel distributes the guard of the various parts of 
Belinda's dress; and menaces them with severe and appropiate pun- 
ishment in case they abandon or neglect their charge. The read- 
er's expectation being now wound up to the true epic state of 
suspense, the main action begins. The party land at Hampton 
Court, where, after a game of ombre, described with consummate 
grace and airy ingenuity, they take cotTee, and the Baron executes 
his fatal purpose; and the canto closes with an admirable picture 
of the respective despair and triumph of the ditTerent parties. In 
the fourth book the action quits " this visible diurnal sphere," 
and the gnome Umbriel betakes himself to the enchanted empire 
of the goddess Spleen, from whom he obtains " a wondrous 
bag"- 

"Like that where once Ulysses held the winds; 
There she collects the force of female lungs, 
Sighs, sobs, and passions, and the war of tongues ; 
A vial next she fills with fainting fears, 
Soft sorrows, melting griefs, and flowing tears." 

By the aid of these the gnome incites the fair unhappy to despatch 
Sir Plume (Sir George Brown) to the uncourteous ravisher of the 
lock. The latter refuses to surrender his shining spoil, and Be- 
linda concludes the canto with a lamentation over her hard fate and 
irreparable loss. The fifth canto opens with an admirable descrip- 
tion of a general battle (in metaphor) between the ladies and the 
gentlemen ; the latter of whom, after a contest described with 
Homeric fire, are routed, and commanded by the fair and indig- 
nant victors to restore the lock. It is, however, discovered that 
this "causa teterrima belli" has disappeared and ascended to the 
skies, where it is to shine for ever as a constellation; — 

"A sudden star, it shot through liquid air, 
And drew behind a radiant trail of hair ; 
Not Berenice's locks first rose so bright, 
The heavens bespangling with dishevell'd light. 



CHAP. XII.H THE TEMl'LK OF FAME. 211 

The sylphs behold it kindling as it flies, 

And pleased pursue its progress tlirough the skies." 

From the foregoing meagre outline — all that our space will per- 
niit — the reader will obtain an idea of the ingenious plan and dis- 
tribution of this enchanting miniature epic: to form a notion of 
the exquisite grace and fancy, and variety and delicacy of its ex- 
ecution, he must read it from beginning to end. He will then see 
to what a degree the English language (generally considered by 
foreigners as rather adapted to the expression of strong emotion 
than to the more evanescent delicacies of poesies de salon) has 
been made by the touch of genius a perfect vehicle for the most 
refined subtleties of artificial life. We cannot better conclude 
our remarks on this charming production than by observing the 
watchful dexterity with which Pope in this work has retained 
throughout a purely comic tone. Fully conscious that his strength 
lay in satire, and encountering incessant temptations to do what 
lie knew he could do so well, he has never once abandoned the 
tone of light and good-humoured persiflage, which his taste in- 
formed him was best in harmony with the character of his work. 

Subsequently to ' The Rape of the Cock' Pope published ' Tiie 
Temple of Fame,' an 'Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady,' and (in 
1713) his descriptive poem of Windsor Forest,' which last work, 
however, had been composed at least nine years before. It was 
not to be expected that any poet, whatever might be his genius, 
could twice hit upon an idea so new, so perfect, so original, as 
the leading subject of the ' Rape of the Lock ;' and therefore we 
cannot be surprised to find that the works just specified are, in 
conception, no less than in execution, markedly inferior to the en- 
chanting lilde mock-heroic. Besides this. Pope's genius excelled 
less in the delineation of romantic scenes of chivalrous and alle- 
goric splendour than in the pointed and satiric sketching of the 
follies, absurdities, and affectations of artificial society. ' The 
Temple of Fame' is a development or modernised version, elegant, 
it is true, harmonious, and polished, of ' The House of Fame,' 
which we have already spoken of in our account of Chaucer: and 
it is impossible not to perceive how much of the effect of the 
old poet's rich and splendid allegoric painting has disappeared in 
the process of revival. \i\ conceptions of this kind — and in ge- 
neral in all representations of supernatural objects— the quality 
most indispensable for effect is an air of perfect sincerity and 
earnestness in the poet. It is this quality which communicates 
the peculiar interest and splendour to all the poetry of the 
Middle Ages ; and it is precisely in this — the feeling oi faith — that 
consists the immense ditference between what are generally called 
the classical and romantic schools in modern literature. The 
jiiediacval writers seem to speak from the fulness of belief; the 



212 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XII. 

classicists — or at least their modern imitators — appear to use their 
supernatural interventions (called by them with an unconscious 
and intense propriety " machines'''') rather as rhetorical contriv- 
ances than as articles of faith. 

In the ' Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady' Pope has exhausted all 
his powers of pathos and tenderness — not very extensive, it is 
true — to bewail the untimely death of a person who is represented 
as driven (by causes very obscurely indicated or hinted in the 
poem) to the commission of suicide. The great defect of this 
work is Avant of distinctness, and an uncertainty and inconsist- 
ency of aim. It is exquisitely harmonised, and contains many 
passages which dwell in the reader's memory: but its passion 
wants intensity and unity of direction, and the poet seems too in- 
tent upon eloquence of expression to till the reader with a belief 
of the sincerity of the passion to which he gives such elegant 
utterance. The feeling is true, indeed, but it seems to us neither 
very intense nor very comprehensive : it is rather an echo of the 
accents of deep grief than the strong and agonised cry of true 
passion — rather the sorrow of the stage than the half-stitled and 
convulsive sobbing of a broken heart. This work forms a com- 
panion or pendant to another excellent poem of a somewhat simi- 
lar character, the ' Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard.' In this latter 
work Pope's mastery over the tender and pathetic is exhibited in 
its highest force. The agonies of a hopeless and condemnable 
passion undoubtedly form a subject more fertile and more capa- 
ble of powerful painting than the early death of genius, beauty, 
and misfortune. But though Pope has made the Epistle im- 
measurably superior to the Elegy, every candid reader will, we 
think, agree with us in allowing the enormous space which sepa- 
rates even the Epistle, eloquent, fervid, and brilliant as it is, from 
the deep, pure, and natural pathos of Chaucer, or of even many 
inferior writers among our Elizabethan dramatists. 

Of Windsor Forest' we have but few words to say. Pope's 
genius, which comparatively failed in the portraiture of the simpler 
and more powerful emotions of the human heart, was not likely 
to succeed in the delineation of external nature. He had, it is 
true, gazed with the eye of youth — intensely but witiiout under- 
standing — on the foliage and the streams of that woodland scenery 
■which breathed such freshness into the descriptions of Father 
Chaucer; but Pope's mind wanted that deep love, that intense 
and quiet sympathy, which has made Chaucer, as it made Homer 
and Theocritus, and as it made Thomson and Wordsworth, the 
interpreters and hierophants of the silent oracles of the cloud, and 
of the leaf, and of the rippling water. He had the eye to perceive, 
but he had not the "deuteroscopic or second sight" to understand, 



CHAP, xn.] TRANSLATION OF HOMER. 213 

the handwriting of God, inscribed like the responses of the Cu- 
maean Sibyl upon the leaves of the forest. 

It was at this period of his life — in the full vigour of his extraor- 
dinary powers, and in the morning of his glory — that Pope under- 
took the execution of his gigantic task — the translation into English 
heroic verse of the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer. This great 
Avork, which was published by subscription, and which laid tlie 
foundation of the poet's worldly fortune, extended over a period 
of twelve years, from 1713 to 1725. He relates himself how 
agitated and depressed his mind was for some time by the reflec- 
tion of the colossal labour he had undertaken ; but practice rapidly 
conferred facility, and his unremitting industry was perhaps as- 
sisted by tlie weakness of his health, which secured him from the 
interruptions of ordinary pleasures and amusements. Of the Iliad 
Pope alone was the translator, but in the execution of the Odys- 
sey he called in the aid of his friends and fellow-poets Broome 
and Fenton, to whom together was confided the translation of 
twelve of the twenty-four books. For his Homer Pope received, 
after deducting 800/., which was shared between his fellow-la- 
bourers, a clear sum of above 8000/. ; a circumstance not only 
honourable to the poet, but which strongly indicates the immense 
improvement which liad taken place in the social position of lite- 
rary men, and the movement of advance which had already begun 
towards the liberation of the highest of all professions from the 
degradation of dependence and the humiliating necessity of servile 
adulation. Great was the improvement when Pope was enabled 
by the profits of a single translation to acquire a permanent com- 
petency in the same country where the 'Paradise Lost' had been 
sold for 23/. ! With the prudence and good sense which charac- 
terised him, Pope invested this sum in the purchase of a house 
and garden at Twickenham, one of the most beautiful spots on 
the banks of the Thames. Here he resided till his death, and 
here he entertained the greatest, the wisest, and the wittiest of his 
contemporaries : here assembled Atterbury and Gay, Bathurst 
and Arbuihnot : — 

" Granville the polite, 
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write ; 
Well-natured Garth inflamed with early praise, 
And Congreve loved, and Swift endured, my lays. 
The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read, 
Even mitred Rochester would nod the head ; 
And St. John's self (great Dryden's friend before) 
With open arms received one poet more. 
Happy my studies, when by these approved ! 
Happier their author when by these beloved !" 

The version of Homer, like all translations, may lie looked at 
under two distinct points of view — first, as an English poem ; 



214 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XII. 

secondly, as a revival, in another age and language, of the C4reek 
original. In its character of an English poem (that character 
under which it will ever be regarded by all those readers for 
whose behoof it was written — snch persons, that is to say, as are 
unable to compare it with the Greek) — there can be no question 
as to its high merit. It is a rich, flowing, dignified, brilliant, and 
exquisitely versified poem, deficient it is true in intensity of feel- 
ing, and occasionally disfigured with trivial and meretricious orna- 
ment, but a noble monument of genius and taste. But if we 
judge it in relation to its immortal original; if we examine it as a 
revival of Homer, or an accurate and spirited copy — as faithful 
as the difference of nations, dialects, and times will admit — of the 
great epic of Troy, our decision will be very difi'erent, and very 
much less favourable. Perhaps the best (as it was the shortest) 
criticism ever made upon the ' Iliad' of Pope was the acknow- 
ledgment returned to the translator for his present of the volumes 
by Bentley, the great Greek philologist: — "It is a pretty poem, 
Mr. Pope; but you must not call it Homer." We do no injus- 
tice to Pope when we say that his translation contains nothing 
Homeric from beginning to end, except the names and the events. 
The fervid and romantic tone, the Biblical and patriarchal sim- 
plicity, the mythologic colouring, neither quite divine nor alto- 
gether human, the unspeakable freshness and audacity of the 
images — all that breathes of an earlier world, and of the sunny 
shores, and laughing waves, and blue sky of the old ^-Egean — all 
this is vanished and obliterated ; nay, the very swell and fall of 
the versification, regular in its very irregularity, like the rolling 
of the ocean, to which it has been so well compared, even this 
has found in the English no attempt — even unsuccessful, for per- 
fectly successful no such attempt could ever be — at reproduction 
and imitation. Instead of this, we have the accurate and never- 
failing recurrence of the neat, elegant, well-balanced couplet, the 
timid propriety of modern manners, with all the modern reluct- 
ance to name things by their simple names, the substitution of 
vague and commonplace ornaments — the "curta supellex" of 
classical French poetry — for the burning and picturelike words 
of the Greek; and frequently the introduction, particularly in de- 
scriptive passages, of ideas not to be found in the original at all, 
and conveying absolute contradictions and pliysical impossibili- 
ties; as, for instance, in the celebrated description of a moonlight 
night, so severely yet justly criticised by Wordsworth: — 

" As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, 

O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light ; 
Around her throne the vivid planets roll, 
And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole; 
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed. 
And tip with silver every mountain's head ; 



CHAP. XII.] ESSAY ON MAN. 215 

Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise, 
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies; 
The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight, 
Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light." 

Ill the above verses there are at least a dozen offences against 
nature and reality, and these contradictions are in no case to be 
found in the Greek ; for Homer, like Shakspcare, is invariably 
and minutely true to nature. They both knew well that the 
works of God are more beautiful than those of art. It would be 
superfluous to insist here upon the observation of the immense 
degree in which the effect of a work of fiction depends upon and 
is modified by the tone of the language in which it was written : 
and this increases the difficulty of producing a successful trans- 
lation in an exact ratio with the antiquity, and consequently with 
the merit, of the work. It was well remarked by a man of re- 
fined taste, who had been obliged, by ignorance of the Greek 
language, to make acquaintance with the works of Homer first 
through the medium of translation, that he experienced a much 
more intense impression of the power and majesty of the great 
Ionian from tlie bold and barbarous literal Latin version usually 
affixed to the school editions of the bard, than from the most 
elaborate efforts at transfusing Homer into modern poetry ; and 
that, when afterwards enabled to compare those early impressions 
with the effect of the original Greek, he still retained his opinion. 
And the fact is so. The rude Latin prose is a cast of the immortal 
statue : its grain is coarse, indeed, and its value is insignificant, 
but it preserves the precise outline of the godlike lineaments of 
the original. Our modern poetical translations are copies, smooth, 
polished, and elaborate ; but feeble, timorous, and cold. These 
observations will explain the immense inferiority of all poetical 
imitations and paraphrases of the grander and more oratorical 
passages of the Scriptures. The rudest taste instantly perceives 
the infinite superiority of the concise and burning words of the 
Hebrew, closely and literally rendered in the modern versions, 
even though that fidelity be often attained at the expense of the 
genius and idiomatic character of the language into which such 
version has been made. 

After this great effort of industry and poetical skill, which was 
received with a degree of enthusiasm, honourable, indeed, to Pope, 
but often expressed in terms so strong as to prove how little his 
age really understood or appreciated the peculiar merits of Homer, 
our poet published his ' Essay on Man,' a work of metaphysical 
and moral philosopliy, intended to form part of a vast poetical 
system or cycle of those sciences projected by Pope. The philo- 
sophy of this work is neither very profound, nor the reasonings 
and conclusions (except such as are truisms) either very con- 



216 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XII. 

vincing or very just. The poem, in short, furnishes nn additional 
proof of the natural incompatibility between the higher order of 
poetry and pure abstract ratiocination, and the want of harmony 
that results from their forcible union ; for the reasoning is gene- 
rally found to injure the effect of the verse, at least as much as 
the ornament of verse detracts from the vigour and cogency of 
argument. But if any writer was ever calculated to surmount this 
natural want of accordance between means and end, with which 
we have just reproached didactic poetry in general, that writer 
>vas Pope. The abundant richness of ideas, the novelty, variety, 
and appropriateness of illustration, the sparkling point and neat- J 
ness of expression, and the perfect finish and harmony of versi- | 
fication which the four epistles composing this work so prodigally % 
display, prove that, if he has not succeeded in establishing a model . 
and perfect exemplar of didactic poetry, it was only because such 
an object can never be perfectly attained by human genius. The 
argument of this brilliant composition may be briefly stated : — 
The first Epistle treats of Man in his relation to the Universe, 
showing the imperfections of our judgment founded upon our 
limited acquaintance with the order of nature, and suggesting that 
a higher degree of endowment would only have been productive of 
pain and misery — a conclusion which, like many other of Pope's 
deductions, involves a paradox. In the second, Man is treated as 
an Individual, i. e. with relation to himself; and the poet shows 
that the passions and desires are given him with an evident bene- 
volence of intention, as by them the stock of happiness is aug- 
mented — nay, as without them happiness itself would be inconceiv- 
able and impossible. The third Epistle views Man in his rela- 
tion to Society; and in the fourth and last the poet discusses the 
various notions respecting Happiness. Throughout the whole of 
this masterly work it is impossible to decide whether we are most 
to admire the point and neatness of the argument, the abundant 
wealth of illustration, collected from a wide extent of reading and 
observation, or the enchanting harmony and finish of the language 
and versification. The couplet is carried to its highest perfection; 
and though an instrument of but limited compass, comparatively 
to the organ-like blank-verse of Milton, or the myriad-voiced and 
ever-changing dramatic versification of the elder drama. Pope has 
proved that in the hand of a master even this imperfect instrument 
could " discourse most eloquent music." 

In 1727 there appeared three volumes of Miscellanies, in prose 
and verse, the composition of that distinguished society of which 
Pope and Swift in poetry, and Arbuthnot in humorous prose, 
were the most brilliant ornaments. The associates, all bound 
together by the closest ties of friendship, and by a perfect similar- 
ity of tastes, principles, and prejudices, worked together so com- 



CHAP. XIl.] MISCELLANIES. 217 

pletely that it is impossible to assign to each, at least with much 
certainty, the portions composed by the respective Jellow-labourers. 
The work is throughout sparkling with satire, wit, and humour — 
at least that humour which consists rather in an acute perception 
of the ludicrous and contemptible than in a deep sympathy with 
the human heart. The severity and occasional personality of the 
satire raised round Pope a storm of literary hatred, in many cases 
envenomed by religious and political enmity; and on these as- 
sailants Pope was afterwards to inflict a memorable vengeance. 
One article of tlie Miscellanies was a portion of a prose comic 
romance, or written caricature, intended to ridicule the vain pur- 
suits of ill-directed erudition, and the solemn puerilities of scien- 
titic pedantry. Of this work, entitled the ' Memoirs of Martinus 
Scriblerus,' the idea was better than the execution ; many of the 
follies ridiculed being such, according to Johnson's excellent 
criticism, as had long ceased to be prevalent, and there being a 
general tone of coarseness and farcical exaggeration prevailing 
throughout the work. Arbuthnot, there can be but little doubt, 
was the principal author of this not very successfuljet^ cV esprit ; 
but he was much happier in his ludicrous ' History of John 
Bull,' which, though referring only to temporary politics, and 
principally directed against Marlborougli, has a vein of irresistible 
drollery which time cannot deprive of its charm. Indeed, highly 
as almost all the members of Pope's brilliant coterie were en- 
dowed with ivit (and perhaps at no time in the history of English 
literature was that quality more abundanUy displayed), the amiable 
and learned Arbuthnot was the only person, with the exception 
of Addison, who exhibited much of tlie sentiment properly called 
humour. These qualities, so nearly allied in many respects — 
for Humour bears the same relation to Wit as Imagination does to 
Fancy — yet are very rarely found much developed in the same 
period of literature — much more rarely in the same individual. 
One is the tropical plant, dazzling in colour, but scentless and 
unfruitful; the other the rich and life-sustaining vegetation of the 
temperate zone. They are respectively the gem and the flower — 
or rather, perhaps, the gem and the seed. 

Pope, as we have just hinted, took a terrible revenge on those 
whose envy, whose jealousy, or whose indignation had been 
aroused by the burning irony and withering sarcasm embodied 
in numberless passages of the Miscellanies. His wit, keen and 
polished as was its edge, was not always wielded by the hand of 
justice ; and, as the Chinese proverb pitliily expresses it, the dart 
of contempt will pierce the shell of the tortoise. The obscurest 
intellects, the coldest and most insensible of souls, will be roused 
into anger by the |)oint of a sarcasm ; and Pope, one of whose 
chief and very natural errors was the notion that all true virtue, 
19 



218 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XII. 

as well as all pure taste and sound morality, was concentrated in 
the small circle of his friends, raised around him a cloud of en- 
emies, most of them individually insignificant, and many person- 
ally contemptible, but all infuriated by the most intense animosity 
against the reigning wit and his clique. This nest of hornets 
Pope determined to destroy at one stroke, and he composed his 
admirable satire of 'The Dunciad,' — the Iliad of the Dunces. 
Taking for his key-note the MacFlecknoe of his great predeces- 
sor, Dryden, he has given us in this satire one of the most 
sweeping, fierce, and brilliant philippics in which, under the 
mask of a reprobation of bad writing and bad taste. Genius ever 
revenged the injuries of Self-Love. The plot or fable of this ad- 
mirable satire is the election of a new monarch to fill on earth 
the throne of Dulness, and the various games and trials of skill 
performed by the bad writers of the day to do honour to the event. 
In this manner the poet has been enabled to introduce an incre- 
dible number of individuals, most of them, indeed, deserving of 
contempt in a literary point of view, but some of whom are at- 
tacked with a ferocity of personality totally indefensible on either 
merely literary or moral grounds. 

In richness of ideas, in strength of diction, and in intensity of 
feeling, this production surpasses all that Pope had previously 
done, and is perhaps the finest specimen of literary satire which 
exists in any language in the world. The whole vocabulary of 
irony is exhausted. The whole universe of contempt is ran- 
sacked. We find the combined merits of the most dissimilar 
satirists — the wild, fearless, inventive, picturesque extravagance 
of Aristophanes, the bitter irony and cold sarcasm of Lucian, the 
elegant raillery of Horace, and Juvenal's strange union of moral 
severity and grim pleasantry. It is curious to read these brilliant 
records of literary animosity, and to reflect upon the unenviable 
immortality which Pope's genius has conferred upon the meanest 
of scribblers and the most despicable of pamphleteers. Like the 
straws, the empty shells, ami excrements of dead animals, which 
the lava has preserved for uncounted centuries, and in which the 
eye of the geologist beholds the records of past convulsions, these 
names have been preserved uninjured through a period of time 
when many things a thousand times more valuable have perished 
for ever ; and they exist, and will continue to exist, as long as 
the English language shall endure, imperishable but valueless 
memorials — the trash of literature, vitrilied by the lightning of 
indignant genius. 

In tlie tierce contentions which agitated the declining j'ears of 
Pope there can be no doubt that the satirist sufiered far more than 
his victims, and that the deepest wounds dealt u\\ others by the 
keen and polished weapon of his sarcasm were as nothing in 



1 CHAP. XII.] pope's satires AND EPISTLES. 219 

comparison with the agonies which nerved his own arm to wield 
that resistless weapon. Genius in its very definition, implies a 
peculiar and exquisite degree of sensibility, or at least sensi- 
tiveness ; and it is but just that, when that highest gift of God 
is perverted to selfish purposes, to avenge insulted vanity, to 
humiliate, to blacken, and to crush, the very exercise of that en- 
dowment should necessarily entail upon its perverter a bitter and 
inevitable retribution. God is love; and his highest gift to man 
' can only be fitly employed in deeds of love and charity. Per- 
sonal invective and personal hate, though masked under the 
specious pretext of a zeal for good taste, is hardly a less repre- 
; hensible employment for high intellectual powers than sensuality 
! or blasphemy ; and it is fortunate that in this instance, as in all 
others, the crime brings its punishment along with it. 

Between the years 1733 and 1740 Pope gave to the world his 
: 'Satires, Epistles, and Moral Essays,' addressed for the most part 
to his distinguished literary friends, Bolingbroke, Arbuthnot, &c. 
: These admirable compositions, considered separately, are in most 
cases directed against some prevailing vice or folly, and it is per- 
j haps in them that the poet's genius is seen in its fullest splendour. 
I Glowing with fancy and a rich profuseness of illustration, adorned 
I with every splendour which art or industry could confer, they are 
I noble and imperishable monuments of knowledge, of acuteness 
f of observation, of finish, and of facility ; for the poet had now 
• attained that mastery in his art when the very elaboration of the 
workmanship is concealed in the apparent ease of the execution. 
, They abound in happy strokes of description, in exquisite appro- 
; priateness of phrase, and a thousand passages from these charm- 
ing compositions have passed into the ordinary language of the 
poet's countrymen — a sure test of the value of a work. Having 
! been less exposed in the composition of this work to tlie evil 
influences of personal and literary enmity. Pope has avoided that 
air of malignant ferocity which defiles so much of the ' Dunciad ;' 
J and the tone of the Satires is in general far more Horalian ; that 
j is, far more in accordance with good taste, good breeding, and 
I good nature. In 1742 Pope added a fourth book to the " Dun- 
1 ciad,' describing the final advent on earth of the goddess of Dul- 
j ness, and the prophesied millennium of ignorance, pedantry, and 
1 stupidity. In this he has exhibited a gorgeousness of colouring and 
a fertility of invention which would enable him to claim no mean 
place among merely picturesque poets. During the following 
: year our indefatigable satirist, moved by the restless caprice of 
his literary enmity, published a new edition of the four books of 
the 'Dunciad,' having deposed from the throne of Dulness its 
former occupant, Theobald, a tasteless pedant and commentator 
on Shakspeare, whose place in " that bad eminence" was now 



220 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XII. 

supplied by Gibber, a man who had succeeded in attracting 
Pope's particular hatred. This change, made to gratify a tem- 
porary and personal dislike, was in the highest degree injudicious, 
and as injurious to the poem as it was destructive of the reader's 
conviction (no unimportant thing for the effect of a satire) of the 
author's sincerity and good faith. Theobald was one of the 
worms of literature, a painful antiquarian, devoting his feeble 
powers to the iUustration of obscure passages in Shakspeare's 
writings ; useful, indeed, but certainly humble enough to have 
escaped the martyrdom of a ' Dunciad' immortality. The truth 
is, that private pique had animated Pope in placing Theobald at 
tlie head of the dunces. Tlie great poet had himself published 
an edition of Shakspeare, in which his want of that minute anti- 
quarian knowledge which Theobald undoubtedly possessed was 
ghiringly apparent, a defect which the latter was naturally but too 
willing to point out. The character given to Theobald in the 
'Dunciad,' though of course exaggerated with all the ingenuity of 
a rich imagination and an intense jealousy, was in the main appro- 
priate ; but when Gibber took the commentator's place, and the 
old books, the obscure learning, the peddling pedantry, — 
" And all such reading as was never read," — 

the cold creeping industry and tasteless curiosity, which accorded 
well enougli with the character of Theobald, were transferred to 
Gibber, even the warmest admirers of Pope were obliged to con- 
fess that hatred had blunted the great poet's taste and destroyed 
his feeling of fitness. Gibber, then an actor of high reputation, 
and a man who has left us, in his autobiography, one of the most 
extraordinary combinations ever seen of vivacity, folly, wit, 
generosity, vanity, and affectation, was a character as little in ac- 
cordance with that of Theobald as unfit to take his place as King 
of the Dunces. " The author of -the Gareless Husband," as 
Warton justly remarks, " was no proper king of the dunces." 

Pope died at Twickenham, on the 30th of May, 1744, after a 
life passed in incessant industry and intellectual agitation, but 
adorned with a greater share of contemporary glory than often 
falls to the lot of poets. The weakness of his frame, and his al- 
most incessant ill-health, which, by precluding his engaging in the 
more active scenes and occupations of life, undoubtedly favoured 
the development of his intellectual powers, also tended to make 
him set too high a value on merely literary triumphs; and his 
constitutional irritability, though it gave to his mind an exquisite 
delicacy, an almost feminine acuteness, yet was calculated to in- 
crease his tendency to personal satire, and to deprive him of that 
large and generous spirit of appreciation which tinds out what is 
beautiful, good, and valuable even in things and works most 



CHAP. XII 



1 YOUNG. 221 



foreign from tlie usual field of its contemplation. His poetry- 
was the consummation of what is usually called the classical, but 
which would be much more correctly denominated the French, 
school — perfect good sense, an a(hiiirable though somewhat pe- 
dantic propriety, polish, point, and neatness, seldom carried away 
into enthusiasm, not, as Shakspeare expresses it, — 



•A muse of fire, that would ascend 



The brightest heaven of invention," 

but always delicate, impressive, sa/j-^/ac/on/. In his serious and 
pathetic pieces, though the passion or the sentiment is generally true 
and natural, the expression is often unworthy of the thought — not 
from its homeliness and simplicity, however, but, on the contrary, 
from the perpetual fear which we seem to perceive in the poet lest 
he should degrade his art by making it the expression of human 
feeling in its grand and dignified plainness and straightforward- 
ness. There is always a degree, and often an unnecessary one, 
of ornament, graceful, it is true, and appropriate : but we remem- 
ber that the veiled Ventis is the production of an already degene- 
rating art. 

Almost exactly contemporary with Pope lived an author whose 
poetrj', singular, original, and strongly individual, enjoyed a high 
though certainly inferior reputation. This was Edward Young, 
the ingenious and often sublime melancholy of whose ' Night 
Thoughts' obtained numberless readers and admirers among the 
poet's own countrymen, and powerfully contributed at the same 
time to lead foreigners, and especially Frenchmen, into that false 
estimate of the national character of the English people, and those 
false notions of the general tone of English literature, which have 
been long so absurdly prevalent even among the best-informed of 
continental critics. Madame de Stael, among others, has attempt- 
ed to derive the alleged melancholy which she supposes to mark 
the English character, and the supposed gloom and despondency 
which so many superficial observers have thought they discovered 
in our literature, from the influence of the poems of Ossian and of 
the mournful contemplations of Young! 

The fallacy of such an opinion hardly requires or admits of 
a serious refutation. Without stopping to show that the impos- 
sible caricature embodied in the so-called poems of Ossian — the 
caricature of a state of manners that never had nor never could 
have had a real existence in any age or country — that this extra- 
vagant caricature, we say, ever exerted on English literature any 
perceptible influence, or that IVIacPherson's bold forgery ever ex- 
cited in society any sentiment beyond that of a passing and tran- 
sitory wonder, we might allege that Young's poems have never 
been so extensively read in England as to warrant the critic in 

19* 



222 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. HcHAP. XII. 

considering him as one of the powerful and influential names in 
English literature. Indeed, it may be affirmed that the peculiar 
merits of Young are in no sense such as would be relished by a 
very extensive class of readers, and, appealing rather to the intel- 
lect than to the sensibilities, would not be capable of giving their 
author that hold upon the national mind of his countrymen, witli- 
out which it is vain to talk of a writer being either the guide or the 
reflection of the spirit of his country. The fact is, that, when 
English literature began to be known to foreigners, it was naturally 
that department of English letters whose tone, form, and spirit 
was most consonant with the then taste of continental readers, 
and consequently it was precisely those productions which pos- 
sessed least of the peculiar idiosyncrasy of national character. 
Tiuis the Frenchman, in forming liis estimate of the general cha- 
racter of the English Muse, imagined as the principal features of 
its portrait, not the wild richness of the Elizabethan prose and 
poetry, its unstudied fancy, its playful wisdom, its all-embracing 
depth of philosophical verity, but the neat elegance of Pope, or 
the fantastic and epigrammatic sadness of Young. 

Edward Young was born in 1681, and educated at AH Souls' Col- 
lege, Oxford: the greater and earlier part of his long life (for he died 
at 84) was busily occupied in the pursuit of literary and political dis- 
tinction, in not very successful strugijles after fame as a poet and as 
a courtier. Having met at the hands of several patrons, and parti- 
cularly at those of the infamous Duke of Wharton, with many 
overwhelming disappointm nts. Young, at the age of liliy, took 
clerical orders, and passed the remainder of his life in uneasy re- 
tirement, satirising those pursuits in which he had failed, and to 
which he appears to have looked back with unceasing regret, 
thinly veiled, however, with a somewhat affected tone of moral 
self-abnegatiou and philosophic dignity. His first important work 
was the 'Love of Fame,' which he qualifies as 'The Universal 
Passion.' This is a keen, vigorous, and manly satire, divided into 
seven epistles, and strongly recalling some of the finer peculiari- 
ties of Pope, whose style it resembles more than most of Young's 
other productions, particularly in its being written in the rhymed 
couplet. But while we find in this work strong traces of Pope's 
clearness, directness, energy, and point, we shall look in vain for 
his exquisite propriety of diction, his gay and playful airiness, and 
that happy tone of good-nature and badinage which he possessed, 
like his master Horace, in so eminent a degree. Young's satire 
is, to a certain degree, more Juvenalian, but at the same time we 
are haunted, in reading it, with an uncomfortable consciousness 
that the moral declamation which so eloquently abounds in it was 
the offspring rather of disappointed ambition than of the injured 
dignity of virtue. On entering the Church, Young by no means 



CHAP. XII 



,3 NIGHT THOUGHTS. 223 



relinquished all hopes of distinction ; he wrote a panegyric on the 
kino-, for which he was rewarded with a pension, and is related to 
have been deeply disappointed at being afterwards refused a 
bishopric — a favour withheld from him by the minister on the 
ground of the devotion to retirement so frequently and emphati- 
cally expressed in his works. This is a remarkable instance of 
the malicious ingenuity of courts: and this refusal, there can be 
but little doubt, tended to deepen the gloom which pervades all 
Young's poetry, and particularly his later works. 

Young married a lady of rank, daughter of the Earl of Lich- 
field, and widow of Colonel Lee, to whose two children the poet 
was tenderly attached. The death of this lady, which was fol- 
lowed, though at considerable intervals, by that of the two child- 
ren, produced a powerful impression on Young's mind, and had, 
it is probable, a great influence in suggesting the tone and subject 
of his last and greatest work, the ' Night Thoughts.' It is this 
poem upon which his reputation, in England as elsewhere, is 
principally founded ; and we shall endeavour, in giving a short 
account of its nature and merits, to show the causes of its great 
popularity. It is a series of reflections on the most awful and 
important subjects which can engage the attention of the man or 
of the Christian — on Life, Death, and Immortality — and is in 
many passages executed in a manner worthy of the tremendous 
character of the subject. The poem is divided into nine books, 
or Nights, each of which pursues some train of thought in har- 
mony with the supposed feelings of the poet at the time of com- 
position. These feelings are modified by the deep grief arising 
from the recent loss of many beloved objects, and from the con- 
templation of the total ruin of a surviving person, " the young 
Lorenzo," by some supposed to be the portrait of the poet's own 
son, but who is probably nothing more than an embodiment of 
imaginary atheism and unavailing remorse and despair. There 
can be no doubt that the gloom of these unhappy events was in- 
tentionally aggravated and exaggerated by the poet, in order to 
give greater weight and impressiveness to the reflections which 
he pursues. Whether this want of good faith be real, or only 
existing in the reader's imagination, it is singularly injurious to 
the eflect of the poem; for we are of course apt to look upon the 
deep gloom which Young has thrown over his picture rather as 
a trick of art than as the terrific thunder-cloud — the "earthquake 
and eclipse" of nature: and the diminution of sublimity in our 
minds produced by this want of sincerity is in exact proportion 
to the impression that would have been made had this eloquent 
grief been altogether real. 

The style, too, of Young in the 'Night Thoughts' is of a kind 
little capable of keeping alive those awful feelings of wonder and 



224 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XH. 

sublimity which his genius is so powerful in evoking. In him 
the intellect had an undue predominance over the imagination and 
the sensibility ; and hardly does he raise up before us some grand 
image of death, of power, or of immortality, than he turns aside 
to seek after remote and fantastic allusions, which instantly destroy 
the potent charm. Few writers are so unequal as Young, or 
rather, few writers of such powerful and acknowledged genius 
were ever so deficient in comparative or critical taste. To him 
every idea seemed good, provided only it was strong, original, and 
ingenious; and as his subject was precisely the one least suited to 
this species of intellectual sword-play, the conceits, unexpected 
analogies, and epigrammatic turns of which he was so fond, are 
as ofTensive and incongruous as would be the placing of the frip- 
pery fountains and clipped yews and trim parterres of Versailles 
among the glaciers and precipices of Alpine scenery. This false 
taste for ingenious and far-fetched allusions Young may have in 
some measure acquired from the study of Cowley, Donne, and 
other writers of what was incorrectly called the " metaphysical" 
school of English poetry; but it is easy to observe that what in 
amatory or encomiastic compositions is nothing but false orna- 
ment and perverted ingenuity, becomes, when introduced into a 
work of a sublime and religious character, a great and unpardon- 
able oflence against good taste and propriety. It is impossible to 
open any page of Young without finding something grand, true, 
and striking: he is full of 

" thoughts that wander through eternity." 

He "speaks as one having authority;" and his accents are 
weighty, solemn, and awakening, when he exhibits to us the 
vanity and nothingness of this life, and the nobility of the human 
soul — its aspirations, its destinies, and its hopes. But the mind 
of Young was ever on tlie watch for an opportunity for anything 
striking and new; his genius has "lidless dragon eyes," a rest- 
less, unappeasable vigilance; and no sooner does he perceive the 
slightest opening for an unexpected and epigrammatic turn, than 
he turns aside to pursue tliese butterflies of wit, these " Dalilahs 
of the imagination." Consequently tliere are few poets whose 
works present a greater number of detached glittering apophthegms 
— none who is so little adapted to give continuous pleasure to a 
reader of cultivated taste. Like the painter, he is sometimes equal 
to Raphael, sometimes inferior to himself. 

It would be unjust were we to refuse our tribute of acknow- 
ledgment and admiration to the vast richness and fertility of ima- 
gination displayed by this powerful writer: it is the fertility of a 
tropical climate; or, rather, it is the abundant vegetation of a 
volcanic region ; flowers and weeds, the hemlock and the vine, 



CHAP. XII.] NIGHT THOUGHTS. 225 

the gaudy and noxious poppy and the innocent and life-support- 
ino- wheat — all is brought forth with a boundless and indiscriminate 
profusion. Hence, in si)ite of the gloomy nature of Young's 
subject — a gloom yet further augmented by the half-aflected tone 
of his language — his writings are often studied with rapture by 
the youthful, and by those whose taste is yet unformed; and there 
are not many works whose perusal is fraught at the same time 
with more danger and more advantage. His happinesses of dictioh 
are innumerable. What can be finer either in images or in sound 
than his phantoms of past glory and power? — 

" What visions rise ! 
What triumplis, toils imperial, arts divine, 
In vnther''d laurels glide before my sight! 
What lengths of far-famed ages, billow'd high 
With human agitation, roll along 
In unsubstantial images of air! 
The melancholy ghosts of dead renown, 
Whispering faint echoes of the world's applause; 
With penitential aspect, as they pass. 
All point at earth, and hiss at human pride" — 

or that noble and yet familiar image, so justly praised by Camp- 
bell— 

" Where final Ruin fiercely drives 
Her ploughshare o'er creation" — 

or the bold impersonation of Death, who is introduced 
" To tread out empires and to quench the stars." 

On the other hand, what can be in worse taste than the compari- 
son of the celestial orbs with diamonds set in a ring to adorn the 
finger of Omnipotence, which ring, by a supererogation of ab- 
surdity, is afterwards called a sca/-ring? — 

" A constellation of ten thousand gems. 
Set in one signet, flames on the right hand 
01" Majesty Divine ; the blazing seal. 
That deeply stamps, on all created mind, 
Indelible, his sovereign attributes." 

But perhaps the most easily perceived defect in this extraor- 
dinary work is the want of a plan and interest pervading the 
whole, and producing a natural connection or dependence between 
the various parts of the poem. Of course it would be too much 
to expect that a meditative or contemplative composition should 
contain a fable or narrative of progressive interest; but, at the 
same time, we have a right in every work consisting of many 
parts to look for a certain degree of dependence and mutual co- 
herency. This condition is assuredly not fulfilled by the ' Night 
Thoughts,' the parts of which have no necessary connection, and 
may be displaced in their order without any injury to the effect 



226 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIII. 

of the whole. This blemish, perhaps to a certain degree inevi- 
table, is but too much aggravated by the fragmentary and parox- 
ysmal character of Young's style, producing its effect upon the 
reader, as Campbell justly and acutely remarks, rather by short 
abrupt ictuses of surprise than by sustained splendour of thought 
or steady progression of imagery. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

" SWIFT AND THE ESSAYISTS. 

Coarseness of Manners in the 17th and ISth centuries — Jonathan Swift — Battle 
of the Books — Tale of a Tub — Pamphlets — Stella and Vanessa — Drapier's 
Letters — Voyages of Gulliver — Minor Works — Poems — Steele and Addison 
— Cato — Tatler — Spectator — Samuel Johnson — Prose Style — Satires of ' Lon- 
don' and ' The Vanity of Human Wishes' — Rasselas — Journey to the Hebrides 
— Lives of the Poets — Edition of Shakspeare — Dictionary — Rambler and 
Idler. . 

It can hardly, we think, be denied that the Revolution of 1688 
either produced or was accompanied by certain social effects at 
least temporarily injurious to society in England, and lowering 
the tone of sentiment, not only in political matters, but also, which 
is of much more importance to our subject, in the literary cha- 
racter of the times. Something of the old courtesy, something 
of the romantic and ideal in social intercourse between man and 
man, and still more perceptibly between man and woman, the 
Revolution appears to have annihilated; a more selfish, calculat- 
ing, and material spirit begins to be perceptible in society, and 
consequently to be reflected in books. Language becomes a litde 
ruder, more disputative, and more combative — the intellect now 
plays a more prominent part than either the fancy or the sensi- 
bility — the head has overbalanced the heart. 

Of the general prevalence of such a tone of society there can 
be no more conclusive proof than the personal and literary cha- 
racter of Jonathan Swift ; a man of robust and mighty intellect, 
of great and ready acquirements, of an indomitable will, activity, 
and perseverance, but equally deficient in heart as a man and in 
disinterestedness as a patriot. The Dean of St. Patrick's was 
indeed, a rarely-gifted, prompt, and vigorous intellect; in his par- 
ticular line of satire he is unequalled in literature ; he diil more 
and more readily what few beside himself could have attempted ; 
lie played during his life a prominent and important part in the 



CHAP. XIII.] swift: his career. 227 

political drama of his country, and established himself by his 
writings among the prose classics of the world ; but he was, as a 
man, heartless, selfish, unloving, and unsympathising; as a writer, 
he degraded and lowered our reverence for the divinity of our na- 
ture ; and, as a statesman, he appears to have felt no nobler spur 
to the exertion of his gigantic powers than the sting of personal 
pique and the pang of discontented ambition. 

He was born in Dublin in the year 1667, a posthumous child, 
left dependent upon the uncertain charity of relations for support, 
and the not less precarious favour of the great for protection. 
'J'his unfortunate entrance into life appears to have tinged with a 
darker shade of misanthropic gloom a temperament naturally sa- 
turnine, and to have inspired something of that morbid melan- 
choly which ultimately deepened into hypochondria, and termi- 
nated so terribly in madness and idiotcy. Swift, at the beginning 
of his career received the aid and protection of Sir William 
Temple, who enabled him to complete his education at Oxford, 
and in whose house he made that acquaintance with Mrs. Joiinson 
(the daughter of Temple's steward) which became the source, to 
Swift, of a signal instance of retributive justice, and to the unfor- 
tunate lady of such a sad celebrity under the name of Stella. 
Swift did not begin to write until he had reached the tolerably 
mature age of thirty-four ; and this circumstance will not only 
account for the extraordinary force and mastery which his style 
from the first exhibited, but it will prove the absence in Swift's 
mind of any of that purely literary ambition which incites the 
student 

" To scorn delights, and live laborious days." 

Throughout the whole of his literary career Swift never appears 
to have cared to obtain the reputation of a mere writer : his 
works (the greater number of which were political pamphlets, 
referring to temporary events, and composed for the purpose of 
attaining temporary objects) seem never to have been considered 
by him otherwise than as means, instruments, or engines for the 
securing of their particular object. The ruling passion of his 
mind was an intense and arrogant desire for political power and 
notoriety; or, as he says himself, "All my endeavours, from a 
boy, to distinguish myself, were only for want of a great title and 
fortune, that I might be used like a lord by those icho have an 
opinion of my parts — whether right or wrong, it is no great 
matter." This ^yas indeed but a low and creeping ambition ; 
and the fruit — at least as far as any augmentation of human hap- 
piness is concerned — is worthy of the tree. 

The protege of Temple, Swift was naturally, at the beginning 
of his public life, a Whig ; and his first achievements in the war- 



228 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIII. 

fare of party were made under the Whig banner. He also ex- 
hibited his attachment to his patron by taking part in the famous 
controversy respecting the comparative superiority of the ancients 
or the moderns ; a controversy of which Temple was the most 
distinguished champion. Swift wrote the ' Battle of the Books,' 
a short satirical pamphlet, full of that coarse invective and savage 
personality which afterwards rendered him so famous and so for- 
midable. Some of the incidents of the battle are worthy of the 
hand which painted the Yahoos or the Projectors' College of 
Laputa. The principal object of attack in this fierce and brutal 
piece of drollery was Bentley. 

In 1704 appeared Swift's extraordinary satiric allegory, entitled 
' The Tale of a Tub,' in which the author pretends to give an 
account of the rise and policy of the three most important sects 
into which Christendom has unhappily been divided — the Roman- 
ist, Lutheran (with which he identifies the Church of England), 
and Calvinistic Churches. 

These events are recounted in the broadest, boldest, most un- 
reserved language of farcical extravagance; the three religions 
being typified by three brothers, Peter (the Church of Rome, or 
St. Peter), Martin (that of Luther), and Jack (John Calvin). The 
corruptions of the Romish Church, and the renunciation of those 
errors at the Reformation, are allegorised by a number of tassels, 
fringes, and shoulderknots, which the three brothers superadd to 
the primitive simplicity of their coats (the practice and belief of 
the Christian religion). These extraneous ornaments Martin 
strips ofl^ cautiously and gradually ; but poor Jack, in his eager- 
ness, nearly reduces himself to a state of nature. Nothing can 
exceed the richness of imagination with which Swift places in a 
ridiculous or contemptible light the extravagances of the three 
brothers. It must be observed that he invariably sides with 
Martin, and pursues the fantastic pranks of Jack with a pitiless 
and envenomed malignity that shows how richly nature had gifted 
him for the trade of political and religious lampooning. This 
strange work is divided into chapters, between which are inter- 
posed an equal number of what the author calls "digressions," 
and whicli latter, like the main work, are absolute treasuries of 
droll allusion and ingenious adaptation of obscure and uncommon 
learning. 

In 1708 Swift turned Torj'^ ; and he was soon found writing as 
nervously, fluently, and vigorously on the side of his new patrons 
as ever he had done in support of his former one. He now pub- 
lished successively a number of able pamphlets, under the title of 
'Sentiments of a Church-of-England Man,' 'Letters on the Appli- 
cation of the Sacramental Test,' and the admirable 'Apology for 
Christianity.' In this last production, under his usual veil of 



CHAP. XIII. 1 STELLA AND VANESSA DRAPIER's LETTERS. 229 

grave irony, he shows the ill consequences which would result 
from an abolition of the Christian religion: among the rest, l"or 
example, proving what a loss it would be to the freethinker and 
scoffer and esprit fort to be deprived of so fertile a subject of 
ridicule as is now afforded by the principles and practice of our 
religion. 

About the same time. Swift, in a succession of humorous jeiix 
(Vcsprit, ridiculed the credulity of many classes of persons at that 
lime as to the predictions of astrology, and the gross ignorance of 
the almanac-makers, and other needy and obscure quacks, who 
administered food to the public appetite for the marvellous. 

In 1712 he wrote a species of half-history, half-pamphlet, enti- 
tled 'The Conduct of the Allies,' severely reflecting upon the 
Duke of Marlborough ; and nearly at the same time he became 
acquainted with the beautiful and most unhappy Vanessa, whose 
real name was Vanhomrigh. This young lady had been in some 
measure educated by Swift; and the fair pupil conceived for her 
instructor a passion of that deep, durable, and all-engrossing cha- 
racter, which, for weal or woe, tills and occupies a whole exist- 
ence, and to whose intensity not even time can apply any real 
alleviation. It is not certain how far a thoughtless vanity, or an 
almost incredible hardness of heart, or a taint of that insanity 
which was to cloud the setting of Swift's bright and powerful 
intellect, may have led him to sport with the affections of this 
unfortunate girl; but, at tlie very time when he was allowing her 
to indulge in dreams of happiness which he knew were vain, 
Swift was keeping up with Stella, the former victim of his selfish 
vanity, the hope of a union which, if it came at all, was certain to 
be but too tardy a reparation. Vanessa died of a broken heart, 
on learning the relations in which Swift stood, and had all alono- 
remained, with respect to Stella: and Stella appears ultimately to 
have received a legal right to Swift's protection as a husband. 
But this act af justice came too late either to restore her ruined 
happiness or to save her life. For this double act of heartlessness 
Swift was to suffer a terrible and just retribution. 

At the accession to the English throne of the House of Hanover, 
Swift retired to Ireland : for the Whigs were now in power. But 
in leaving the more busy stage of English politics, Swift carried 
with him the greatest powers to annoy and harass the government 
at a distance: and he soon arrived at a pilch of popularity among 
his own countrymen which has never been surpassed — perhaps 
never equalled — even in the heated atmosphere of Irish politics. 
Taking advantage of a species of monopoly (apparently not much 
more unjust and oppressive than such privileges usually are) 
which the government was about to grant to a certain William 
Wood, and the object of which was to admit into Ireland a con- 
20 



230 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. Xlll. 

siderable sum of copper money to be coined by Wood, Swift 
succeeded in raising against the government which granted, and 
the speculator who obtained, the obnoxious monopoly, so violent 
a storm of Irish indignation, that not only was it found impossible 
to execute the project, butan insurrection was very nearly excited ; 
or, to use Swift's energetic answer to Archbishop Boulter, who 
once accused him of having excited the popular fury against the 
government, "If I had lifted my finger, they would have torn 
you to pieces !" The engine of this vehement movement was 
the publication (in a Dublin newspaper) of a succession of letters, 
signed " M. B. Drapier," written by Swift in the character of a 
Dublin tradesman, and a most admirable specimen of consummate 
skill in political writing for the people. 

In 1726 appeared the satiric romance of ' Gulliver,' undoubtedly 
the greatest and most durable monument of Swift's style and ori- 
ginality of conception. ' Gulliver,' being a work of universal 
satire, will be read as long as the corruptions of human nature 
render its innumerable ironic and sarcastic strokes applicable and 
intelligible to human beings; and even were the follies and 
basenesses of humanity so far purged away that men should no 
longer need the sharp and bitter medicine of satire, it would still 
be read with little less admiration and delight for the wonderful 
richness of invention it displays, and the exquisite art with which 
the most impossible and extravagant adventures are related — re- 
lated so naturally as to cheat us into a momentary belief in their 
reality. Tiie book consists of an account of the strange adven- 
tures of the hero in whose person it is written. Nothing can be 
better than the dexterity with which Swift has identified himself 
• — particularly at the beginning — with the character of a plain, 
rough, honest surgeon of a ship, and the minute verisimilitude 
which pervades his relation — a verisimilitude kept up with sur- 
prising watchfulness, even in the least details and descriptions of 
an imaginary world. Lemuel Gulliver, after being shipwrecked, 
all his companions having perished, finds himself landed in the 
country of Lilliput, the inhabitants of which are about six inches 
high, and in which all the objects, natural and artificial, are 
in exact proportion to the people. We have a most amusing 
description of the court, the capital, and the government of this 
pigmy empire; and while exciting our incessant interest by the 
prodigality of invention exhibited, and the wonderful richness of 
fancy, all these descriptions, as well as the account of Gulliver's 
adventures in Lilliput, are made the vehicle of incessant strokes 
of satire, directed not only against the vices and follies of man- 
kind (thus held up to ridicule in the disguise of these human in- 
sects), but against contemporary persons and intrigues. It is 
hardly necessary to remark, that what is of general application 



CHAP. XIII.] GULLIVER. 231 

now possesses a much greater interest than many of the sly tem- 
porary alhisions which probably gave most delight when the 
book appeared. In the second part of the fiction our honest Gul- 
liver visits a nation of giants, where we find the same carefully 
calculated proportion between the people of the country (repre- 
sented as sixty feet high) and the relative size of their trees, ani- 
mals, houses, utensils, and so on. In Brobdignag the illusion is 
perhaps even more artfully kept up than it is in the description of 
Lilliput; the size — so enormous, yet always so perfectly in ac- 
cordance with the scale pre-established — of the various objects 
being here generally indicated, or rather hinted in a parenthesis, 
than elaborately detailed. What can be more richly comic, for 
instance, than the conflagration of the capital of Lilliput, the court 
intrigues, the grand review of the army, Gulliver's capture of the 
entire fleet of Blefuscu, or the terrible schisms of the Big-endians 
and Little-endians ? What can exhibit a more fertile conception, 
or a more truly Rabelaesian drollery, than many of the adventures 
at Lorbrulgrud, the metropolis of the gigantic Brobdignagians ; the 
scene in which poor Gulliver is carried up to the palace-roof by 
the monkey ; the enmities and spiteful tricks of the queen's dwarf, 
" who was of the lowest stature that was ever seen in that country 
(for I verily think he was not full thirty feet high) ;" the descrip- 
tion of the maids of honour; and the battles of Gulliver with 
flies, wasps, rats, and linnets ? The satiric aim is the same in 
both parts of the fiction, though attained by different roads. In 
Lilliput, the author shows us how contemptible would be human 
passions, war, ambition, and science, were they exhibited by the 
insect inhabitants of a microscopic country. In Brobdignag, he 
makes us perceive, by as it were reversing the telescope, the ex- 
treme meanness and insignificance which our institutions, pur- 
suits, and actions would exhibit to beings endowed witli gigantic 
powers. In the second part of the romance he represents Gulli- 
ver as giving to the king of the giants — a wise and pacific mon- 
arch — a description of human warfare, government, and society ; 
and he makes the king conclude, from the little stranger's narrative, 
" that, by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the 
answers I have with much pains wringed and extorted from you, 
I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most per- 
nicious race of litde odious vermin that nature ever sufi'ered to 
f crawl on the surface of the earth." Now this, we apprehend, 
I which is but a fair specimen of the general conclusions of this 
' satire, and indeed the general drift of most of Swift's writings, is 
! neither just nor useful. To be truly powerful, satire must be dis- 
j criminating ; and this sweeping contempt and reprobation not only 
I defeats its own object, but is from the true purpose of satiric 
I painting — that of rendering the species better, wiser, and more 



232 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATUflE. [cHAP. Xlll. 

innocent. Nor must we omit here to speak of a blemish which 
disfigures all Swift's writings, though perhaps it is not more 
prominently offensive in ' Gulliver' than in some of his other 
works, particularly his poems. It is a stain which appears to 
have been, from some strange peculiarity of mental constitution, 
inherent in Swift's character: we allude to the passion which he 
seems to have had to seek after images of pure physical disgust 
and loathsomeness. No writer was ever more truly moral and 
virtuous than Swift, none more studious to hold up vice and folly 
to the contempt and execration of mankind; so that this defect in 
no sense partakes of that detestable ingenuity which makes some 
writers pander to the vilest propensities of our nature, nor even 
of that exaggerated warmth of invective under whose influence 
some satirists (as Juvenal, for instance) have drawn too warm and 
highly-coloured pictures of the vices they attack, and thus, like 
Jaques, done 

" mischievous foul sin in chiding sin." 

No; Swift's offences against delicacy are not of this kind: they 
cannot be said to excite the passions, but they raise the gorge ; 
they make us shudder, not with moral repulsion, but with physical 
disgust. Of all men of supereminent genius, Swift appears to 
have had the least sympathy with what is beautiful, the least en- 
thusiasm for what is sublime. The very force and might of his 
style consists in its being level, plain, prosaic, logical, and unim- 
aginative. But his taste for images of absolute physical filthiness 
we believe to be peculiar to him: the physiologist might discover 
its cause. 

The third part of this celebrated fiction describes the imaginary 
countries of Laputa, a flying island, inhabited by speculative phi- 
losophers, devoted to mathentiatics and music; which gives Swift 
the opportunity to ridicule the follies of pedantic science. From 
tlience the traveller descends to Balnibarbi, a land occupied by 
projectors. The most notable passage of this part of the work 
is the description of the academy, which is not a very happy 
imitation of the college of philosophers so admirably depicted in 
the second part of Rabelais' immortal extravaganza. Besides, 
Swift's ridicule in this part of the work is often deficient in point 
and propriety; nor was the author sufficiently versed either in 
physical science or ancient learning to be able to ridicule with 
much effect the abuses of the one or the follies of the other. 
Many of the objects, too, which he has introduced, are altogether . 
too disgusting and offensive to form proper features even in a 
satiric fiction. Caricature has its decencies and its bienseances 
no less than historic or romantic painting. Rabelais, it is true, 
abounds in coarse and indecent images, no less than in the wildest 



CHAP. XIII.] GULLIVER. 233 

extravagance of burlesque; but we should remember the almost 
frantic tone of animal spirits which pervades his work, so difl'ercnt 
from the grave simplicity of Swift; and we must keep in mind 
the period at which the cure of Meudon wrote, obliging him, at 
the risk of life and liberl}^ never for one moment to let drop the 
antic mask of buffoonery under which he so keenly satirises the 
superstitions of the Church and the vices of the world. More- 
over, Rabelais was (due allowance being made for the difference 
of their respective epochs) a far more learned man than Swift. 
He was also a far more genial spirit; at least equal in wit, and 
immeasurably superior in humour. He kneiv more, and he also 
loved more. Swift was admirably characterised by Coleridge as 
"anima Rabela?sii habitans in sicco," the soul of Rabelais dwell- 
ing in a dry place. 

The next strange country visited is Glubbdubdrib, an island 
inhabited by a people of magicians, who evoke, for the amuse- 
ment of the traveller, the spirits of many great men of anliquit)'; 
thus giving the author an opportunity to indulge his satiric vein. 
But this portion of the book is generally found to be exceed- 
ingly poor and flat. The idea is excellent, but very little has 
been made of it; and we neither laugh nor admire when Hannibal 
is called up from the shades to assure us that " in passing the 
Alps, he had not a drop of vinegar in his camp," of Aristole to 
predict to Descartes that the Newtonian doctrine would as cer- 
tainly be exploded as the vortices of the French philosopher. 

Gulliver next finds his way to Luggnagg, in which country he 
has the opportunity of perceiving how miserable would be the 
consequence of human beings receiving a privilege of eternal life, 
unaccompanied by corresponding health, strength, and intellect ; 
a reservation which seems rather unnecessary, and a kind o[ pe- 
iitio principii. In point of description, however, nothing can be 
finer, more powerful, and Juvenalian in its gloomy energy, than 
Swift's picture of the wretched Struldbrugs, the unhappy possess- 
ors of an " immortality of woe." 

The fourth voyage of Gulliver carries him to the country of the 
Houynhnms ; and is remarkable for a deeper, fiercer, intenser 
flame of satiric fury than any of the three preceding parts. In 
the voyage to Lilliput he chiefly ridiculed the persons and events 
of contemporary politics; in the government of Brobdignag he 
gives us a kind of model of his notions of good government and 
of a patriot king ; in Laputa, &c., he mocks at the abuses of sci- 
ence and learning; but in the last voyage, the current of his sa- 
tire, deepening and widening as it rolls, envelops, like some vast 
inundation, all the institutions of civilized society, and all the 
passions of our human nature. He represents a country in which 
horses are the ruling and supreme beings, while man is degraded 

20* 



234 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIII. 

to the rank of a filthy, noxious, and untamable brute, retaining, 
vith some relics and rough outlines of the human form, all our 
villanous passions and base appetites exhibited in complete na- 
kedness. Setting aside the outrageous improbability of the lead- 
ing idea — viz. that of making horses change place with men in 
the social system of nature — it cannot be doubted that the ferocity 
of the satire is excessive and absurd, and appears to have been 
inspired rather by the rabid instinct of an unreasoning misanthro- 
py, than to have been dictated by the legitimate anger of indignant 
virtue. " It is an ill bird," says the good old proverb, " that fouls 
its own nest;" and any man, possessed of so admirable and com- 
manding intellect as that of Swift, who should give us as the re- 
sult of observations on human nature, collected through a long life 
passed in full communion with the greatest and best of his own 
country, such a picture as that of the Yahoos — a picture whose 
every tint and line testifies the real, sincere, unaff'ected hatred and 
contempt which guided the artist's hand in tracing it — such a man, 
Ave repeat, lays himself open to the charge either of having drawn 
not a portrait but a gross and odious caricature, or of having his 
eyes grievously blinded and perverted by prejudice. 

Besides the two great prose satires, the ' Tale of a Tub' and 
the ' Voyages of Gulliver,' Swift's collected works contain a vast 
number of smaller ludicrous compositions, all of them bearing 
the stamp of the author's mind — originality, vigorous plainness 
of manner, and a perfect acquaintance with all the minutiae of so- 
cial intercourse. Among others we may mention his admirable 
mock-serious treatise called ' Directions to Servants,' in which, 
under ironical precepts, he has exhibited the profoundest know- 
ledge of all the mysteries of the kitchen and the servants' hall. 
In his ' Treatise on polite Conversation' he has given us a simi- 
larly ironical compendium of the coarse jokes, the vulgar repar- 
tees, the pert and proverbial expressions which at that time formed 
the staple of fashionable dialogue. The picture is of course ex- 
aggerated, but the outlines are true. It was an age when fine 
gentlemen and ladies absolutely piqued themselves on their igno- 
rance, and when what were called, in the elegant phraseology of 
the day, "bites" and "selling of bargains," formed the principal 
cnlivenment of fashionable society. 

During his whole life Swift continued from time to time to com- 
pose pieces of poetry of various kinds; and standing, as he did, 
upon the very pinnacle of popularity, it is not surprising that he 
should have obtained a high reputation as a poet. One quality of 
the art he assuredly possessed in an eminent degree, that of origi- 
nality ; and his verses, generally written on particular occasions, 
and often as personal or parly lampoons, have certainly the merit 
of perfect ease, fluency, and sincerity. His more important pieces 



CHAP. XIIl.] swift's poems.' — DEATH 235 

are written in the octo-syllabic rhyme of Prior and Gay ; and 
though they abound in good sense, acute remark, and intense se- 
verity of alhision, they possess none of tlie higher qualities of 
poetry: not much harmony, no depth of feeling, no (or very 
rare) splendour of language. They are, like their author, dry, 
hard and cold. In ' Cadenus and Venessa' he has given a rather 
dull description of the commencement of the sad story of the un- 
happy Hester Vanhomrigh ; in the ' Legion Club' the most in- 
tense expression of hatred and contempt (directed against the 
Irish Parliament) that human pen perhaps has ever traced, or hu- 
man heart conceived ; and scattered through his works are a 
multitude of farcical little compositions, some of them epigrams 
and political pasquinades, others trifles meant merely to amuse 
the privacy of a friendly circle ; but all of which are marked with 
as much excellence as the subject would admit — trifling toys of 
the ingenuity, but toys constructed by a master's hand. His best 
poems of any length are the verses entitled ' A Rhapsody on Po- 
etry,' in the beginning of which are several passages of great 
vigour and more warmth of expression than is usually to be found 
in Swift; and the other called 'Verses on my Own Death,' in 
which, with admirable nature, drollery, and vivacity, he describes 
the various feelings with which that event would be received 
among his friends, acquaintances, and enemies. 

This event was now not very remote; but ere this great wit 
arrived at that repose which an excruciating and incurable disease 
must have made him view with hope, he was destined to pass 
through the severest ordeal to which our nature can be submitted. 
He was to travel, ivliile yet living, through " the valley and the 
shadow of death." 

During the whole of his life he had been grievously afllicted 
with attacks of deafness, giddiness, and pain in the head ; and his 
gloomy and despondent spirit seems to have looked forward with 
prophetic dread to insanity as the probable termination of his 
existence. An aff'ecting anecdote is related by Dr. Young of 
Swift having once been found mournfully gazing on a noble oak, 
whose upper branches had been struck by lightning: " I shall be 
like that tree," said Swift, " I shall die first a-top." Nor were 
these melancholy predictions falsified by the event. About the 
year 1736 he was attacked by repeated fits of pain and loss of 
memory, and in the composition of that terrific invective the 
'Legion Club' he was seized by a species of fit, from whence he 
never recovered sufficiently to finish the poem. The long and 
melancholy interval (of nine years) intervening between this time 
and his death was one uninterrupted succession of mental and 
bodily suffering. He passed from a deplorable and furious mania 
to a state of idiotcy ; and the active politician, the resistless pole- 



236 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. CcHAP. XIII. 

mic, the satirist, the poet, and the wit, died, as he himself had 
feared and half predicted, " in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a 
hole;"— 

« " Swift expired a driveller and a show." 

This event took place, October 19lh, 1745, at Dublin, and excited 
among the lower and middle classes of that city, whose friend, 
adviser, and defender he had been, the liveliest expressions of 
grief and lamentation. "The Dean" was buried in his own 
cathedral of St. Patrick's, and his place of sepulture marked by 
an epitaph composed by himself, some words of which form the 
best and most appropriate commentary that the wit of man could 
have invented upon the writings and the character of this illus- 
trious but most unhappy man : — 

" Hie depositum est corpus 
Jonathan Swift, S. I'. P. 
Ubi S(£va Indignatio — 

Ulterius cor lacerare nequit," .h 

We have taken occasion, in the preceding pages, to advert more 
than once to the coarse and corrupted state of society which pre- 
vailed in England about the accession of William III., and seems 
to have continued with little modification through the reigns of at 
least the first two Georges. That this brutal, selfish, and vulgar 
tone of social intercourse was at once a result and indication of a 
deep and general deterioration of morals is more than probable : 
it partly arose from the unfortunate mixture of politics in the 
whole texture, so to speak, of society, and may be attributed 
partly to the increased influence of the popular element in our 
political constitution, and in some degree doubtless to that rough- 
ness and fdrocity of manners which a long-continued period of 
warfare seldom fails to communicate to a nation, and of which we 
have a signal example in more recent times in the coarse and 
violent tone of manners introduced in France by the military 
spirit of the Republic, the Consulate, and the Empire. Gambling 
was exceedingly prevalent; and drunkenness — so long, alas! the 
vice of Englishmen — was grossly and universally habitual. 
Swearing and gross indecency of language were universally in- 
dulged in. The amusements of all classes possessed the coarse- 
ness of those athletic pastimes of which Englishmen have in all 
ages been so fond, but in many cases without either the courage 
which they inspire, or the generous and manly spirit which they 
cherish. The barbarous and brutalising sports of the cockpit and 
the bull-ring were still pursued with at least as much passion as 
the nobler amusements of the turf, the river, and the field. As 
to the pleasures of the intellect and the taste, they were either 
absolutely unknown, or confined to a few, and those few regarded 



CHAP. XIII.] THE ESSAYISTS I STEELE ADDISON. 237 

as pedants or as humorists, " That general knowledge which 
now circulates in common talk," says Johnson, speaking of this 
period, " was then rarely to be found. Men not professing 
learning were not ashamed of ignorance ; and in the female world 
any acquaintance with books was distinguished only to be cen- 
sured." To combat the national taste for tliese low and sordid 
follies, to infuse a more courteous, refined, and Christian tone into 
the manners of society, was the aim of a number of excellent 
writers, extending over a considerable period of our literary his- 
tory, and known under the general appellation of "Essayists." 
Their aim being so comprehensive, the subjects they had to treat 
so multifarious, and the public they had to address so numerous, 
they adopted the expedient of throwing their remarks upon any 
subject into the form of a paper, publishing at a very cheap rate, 
and at regular and very short intervals. The originator of this 
species of work was Sir Richard Steele, a man admirably qualified 
by vivacity and readiness of intellect, a profound acquaintance 
with life in all its phases, and an undeniable goodness of heart 
and of intention, to undertake the office of a periodical censor of 
manners ; but his reputation as a writer was soon surpassed by 
many succeeding authors of the same kind, and particularly by 
his fellow-labourer and friend Addison. 

This latter person was long considered as a sort of standard or 
model of all that is most easy, elegant, and natural in English 
prose — a throne of supremacy from which he has only recently 
been ejected by the more weighty, more highly-coloured, more 
thoughtful and profound style of modern times, particularly since 
the French Revolution. His career was singulary prosperous. 
He was born in 1672, the son of a country gentleman of very 
moderate fortune, received at Oxford a good and learned education, 
and distinguished himself rather for the elegance than the depth 
of his scholarship. His first appearance in English literature was 
a poetical panegyric on Dryden, written at twenty-two, and in 
which he exhibits much more neatness of versification than ori- 
ginality of thought or justness of critisism. He also translated 
the Fourth Georgic of Virgil, which Dryden printed in his own 
Miscellanies with warm encomiums on the young poet. But the 
work which must be considereil his first earnest of success, and 
which first procured him the entrance to the arena of his after 
political success, was his poem on the King, addressed to Lord 
Somers, then keeper of the seals. This procured him the warm 
and lasting favour and patronage of the powerful lawyer, who 
soon after gave Addison solid proofs of his protection in pro- 
curing him a pension of 300/. a-year, which enabled him to travel 
over the most interesting parts of France and Italy. 

The death of King William deprived Addison of his pension, 



238 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIII. 

but he soon after more than compensated for this loss by the pub- 
lication of his poem on the battle of Blenheim, which was re- 
warded by the place of Commissioner of Appeals. The poem 
is little better than a rhymed gazette, and strongly reminds the 
reader of the once equally celebrated but now equally unread 
poem of Boileau, on the passage of the Rhine by Louis XIV. 
There is in both works the same incessant and ineffectual struggle 
to appear splendid and animated, but the same stiffness, artifice, and 
effort. The famous comparison of Marlborough to a destroying 
angel was as much admired in its day as the often-quoted 

"II se plaint de sa gloire qui I'attache au rivage" 

of the courtly and witty Despreaux. 

Addison now rapidly and steadily advanced along the path of 
political distinction : he was made Under-Secretary of Slate, and 
accompanied Wharton to Ireland. In 1716 he married the Dow- 
ager Countess of Warwick, to whose son he had formerly been 
tutor; but this union, as might have been expected, was an un- 
happy one — as such ill-assorted matches between hereditary no- 
bility and intellectual celebrity are generally found to be. Addison 
was appointed, in 1717, Secretary of State, an office for which 
his fastidious delicacy of taste, timid character, and total want 
both of business talents and parliamentary eloquence, rendered 
him by all accounts singularly unfit. He soon resigned a dignity 
for which he was so unfitted by nature, and was rewarded for his 
services with a pension of 1500/. a-year. He died on the 17th 
of June, 1719, leaving behind him a most enviable reputation for 
purity and integrity of life. After making due allowances for the 
tone of exaggeration and penegyric in which his biography has 
been written, it is impossible not to allow him high praise for 
personal virtue and piety. It would be too much to expect that 
any man — particularly one who was at the same time a literary 
man and a politician — should be perfect; and when we reflect 
how much a ministerial life tends to sour the temper and inflame 
envy and suspicion, we cannot be surprised that Addison, in spite 
of a character naturally amiable and benevolent, should have 
sometimes exhibited a little querulousness and impatience. As 
an author it is not so easy to draw his character, though its prin- 
cipal outlines will nearly coincide with those of his political por- 
trait. "We shall find the same timid propriety, the same universal 
and unquestionable goodness of aim and intention, with perhaps 
a little shade of the subdued jealousy of other men's glory which 
drew from Pope those far-famed and admirable limes — 

"were there one whose fires 
True genius kindies, and fiiir fame inspires; 
Bless'd with each talent and each art to please, 



CHAP. Xin.] TRAGEDY OF CATO. 239 

And born to write, converse, and live with ease j 
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone. 
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne ; 
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes. 
And hate for arts that caused himself to rise ; 
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, 
And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; 
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, 
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; 
Alike reserved to blame, and to commend, 
A timorous foe, or a suspicious friend ; 
Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged, 
And so obliging, that he ne'er obliged ; 
Like Cato, gives his little senate laws. 
And sits attentive to his own applause; 
While wits and Templars every sentence raise. 
And wonder with a foolish face of praise ; — 
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be ? 
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he ?" 

Before we speak of that portion of Addison's writings upon 
which is chiefly based his enduring reputation as a classical Eng- 
lish prose writer, it would be unjust not to speak of one or two 
of his principal productions, by which he attained in his own day 
the summit of popularity, though they are now comparatively 
neglected. The chief of these is, undoubtedly, the tragedy of 
'Cato.' 'Cato' is a work constructed according to the very 
strictest rules of the so-called classical propriety. The three 
unities are exactly and laboriously preserved, the action simple 
and elevated, the personages few in number, the sentiments and 
language throughout studiously elevated and imposing. It is, in 
short, a carefully-carved mask of the neatest workmanship ; but 
the reader at every moment exclaims, with the fox in the fable, 
"What a pity it hath no brains!" To preserve the vaunted unity 
of time and place (which, when preserved, is good for nothing), 
the author sacrifices probability — not only real, but dramatic — in 
the most extraordinary manner: making conspirators plot against 
Cato in Calo's own house ; making the hero himself commit 
suicide in an open hall, public to all tiie world; representing a 
project made to carry off a lady by means of the disguise not 
only of her lover but of all her lover's body-guards; and a thou- 
sand other such absurdities. For the characters and manners, 
they are worthy of the plot: they are neither Romans nor Numi- 
dians, neither patriots nor conspirators, because they are not 
human beings. "The virtuous Marcia towers above her sex" 
indeed, but it is in frigid pedantry of ambitious declamation; the 
patriotic harangues of Cato are sickly commonplaces, fagoted to- 
gether out of history; and the celebrated soliloquy of the hero, 
when he meditates suicide, though certainly not devoid of merit, 
yet is only valuable as a purely didactic passage. Shakspeare, 
Jonson, Massinger, Beaumont — these have shown us Roman 



240 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIII. 

passions, Roman patriotism, and Roman language : these frigid 
abstractions bear the same relation to the Romans of Shakspeare, 
or the Romans of Rome, as the waxen dolls in the window of a 
barber to the living, moving, thinking passengers that walk by 
them in the street. 

But it is as a periodical essayist that Addison earned his true 
glory. On the 12th of April, 1709, Steele commenced the pub- 
lication of a small sheet, issued thrice a-week, at a very low price 
(each number cost a penny), containing a short essay or dis- 
quisition upon some topic connected with the dress, behaviour, 
morality, amusements, &c., of the upper and middle classes of 
society. The remaining portion of the half-sheet was devoted to 
news and general information. Tiiis kind of semi-didactic news- 
paper was chiefly written by its first projector, Steele, under the 
pseudonym of Isaac BickerstafT, and was entitled 'The Tatler.' 
The essays, which formed its prominent feature, were distin- 
guished for that ease, unaffected good-nature, and fluent, though 
not always very correct, style which characterised the amiable 
author; and the work met with so much success that no morning 
tea-table was without this indispensable accompaniment. 'The 
Tatler' continued its career till it amounted to 271 numbers, when 
it was transformed or remodelled into a nearly similar publication, 
still more famous in English literature, under the name of ' The 
Spectator.' In the composition of ' The Tatler' Steele had re- 
ceived the occasional assistance of Addison ; but in its successor 
the latter took a much more active part, contributing all the papers 
marked with any one of the letters composing the word Clio. 
'The Spectator' began on March 1st, 1713, and, appearing daily, 
instead of thrice a-week, as 'The Tatler' had done, extended to 
635 numbers, each of which contains a complete essay, generally 
upon some subject of moral importance, and occasionally a dis- 
quisition on the principles of criticism, and the application of 
those principles in judging of some great work of literature or art. 
The oi)ject of these elegant publications was in the highest degree 
laudable and excellent. " I shall endeavour," says Steele him- 
self, "to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with mo- 
rality, that my readers may, if possible, both ways find their 
account in the speculation of the day. It was said of Socrates, 
that he brought philosophy down from heaven to inhabit among 
men. I shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that I have 
brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and col- 
leges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables, and in cofl'ee- 
houses." Accustomed as we now are to a much more refined 
and intellectual tone of social intercourse, and to the diffusion, 
even to the lower order of people, of a degree of general know- 
ledge and information which was then extremely rare even in the 



CHAP. XIII.3 THE SPECTATOR. 241 

hio-hest, we may smile at the somewliat trite and commonplace 
tone of many of these essays, at the slender parade of scholarship, 
the little scrap of Latin or Greek prefixed to them as a motto — a 
sentence of TuUy, or a precept of Seneca or Longinus; but we 
were unjust to forget the excellent morality, the useful and reason- 
able principles of good-breeding, the Christian and gentle spirit 
which they inculcate; and we must remember too, that, however 
narrow, and prejudiced, and exclusive may seem to us the dogmas 
of Addison's literary criticisms, yet that these were the drst popnlar 
essays in English towards the investigation of the grounds and 
axioms of aesthetic science, and that even here, in innumerable 
instances (as, for example, in the celebrated reviews of Paradise 
Lost,' and of the ohl national ballad of 'Chevy Chase'), we find 
the author's natural and delicate sense of the beautiful and sub- 
lime triumphing over the accumulated errors and false judgment 
of his own artificial age, and the author of ' Cato' doing uncon- 
scious homage to the nature and pathos of the rude old Border 
ballad-maker. 

But the most delightful portions of 'The Spectator' are those in 
which the " short-faced gentleman," the supposed author, speaks 
of the imaginary club of which he is a member. The army is 
represented by Captain Sentry ; the fashionable world by an old 
beau. Will Honeycomb ; the city and men of business express 
their opinions through the mouth of Sir Andrew Freeport; and 
the country gentlemen are represented by Sir Roger de Coverley. 
These personages have very little life, humour, or individuality, 
with the exception of the last, which is one of the most exquisite 
embodiments of nature which the pencil of fiction has ever drawn. 
The mixture, in this enchanting portrait of benevolence, old- 
fashioned politeness, simplicity, superstition, charity, and a taste 
for rural sports, is sketched with a light and delicate, yet firm and 
skilful hand, which makes the picture — though so diflerent in 
style — well worthy to hang in the same gallery with Don Quixote 
or with Parson Adams, with the Lismahago of Smollett or the Mr. 
Shandy of Sterne. The first idea of this sketch, it is most pro- 
bable, was suggested, and the outline perhaps roughly drawn in, 
by Steele. Be this as it may, whether first suggested by Steele, 
and afterwards elaborated by Addison, or one of those happy con- 
ceptions which men owe sometimes to accident fully as much as 
to inspiration. Sir Roger de Coverley is uniformly and unfailingly 
the delight of every reader — 

" A. beautiful thought, and softly shadow'd forth ;" 

and Addison, not unconscious of the beauty of his work, seems 
to have taiien an inexhaustible delight in placing it in new points 
of view, and drawing forth, with the gentle and quiet touch of 
21 



242 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [IcHAP. XIII. 

humour and genius, all its innocent and attaching oddities. He 
gives us Sir Roger during his visit to London; he accompanies 
him (in an enchanting passage) to Westminster Abbey ; he carries 
us to the country to visit him in his old pinnacled and mullioned 
hall, deep embosomed in ancestral trees ; he shows us the good 
knight in his moments of tender pensiveness, or gaily chatting 
with his ingenious kinsman. Will Wimble,. or mildly testifying 
against the witchcraft of Moll White, the village sorceress. When 
Sir Roger dies (for Addison is reported to have killed him, as 
Cervantes did his admirable knight, in order to prevent any grosser 
hand from continuing, and perhaps spoiling, his creation), we feel 
as if we had lost a friend. 

" Whoever wishes," says Johnson, " to attain an English style, 
familiar but not coarse, elegant but not ostentatious, must give his 
days and nights to the study of Addison." We cannot conclude 
our notice of this excellent writer and estimable man more appro- 
priately than by adopting the words of Chambers, which are 
warm, just, and comprehensive: — "In Addison the reader will 
find a rich but chaste vein of humour and satire; lessons of mo- 
rality and religion, divested of all austerity and gloom; criti- 
cism at once pleasing and profound ; and pictures of national cha- 
racter and manners tliat must ever charm from their vivacity and 
truth. Greater energy of character, or a more determined hatred 
of vice and tyranny, would have curtailed his usefulness as a public 
censor. He led the nation insensibly to a love of virtue and con- 
stitutional freedoQi, to a purer taste in morals and literature, and 
to the importance of those everlasting truths which so warmly en- 
gaged his heart and imagination." 

But to us, whose eyes have been scaled and purged by the all- 
curing power of time, the greatest figure in this period of English 
literary history is undoubtedly Samuel Johnson. As a writer, he 
is the very incarnation of good sense ; and as a man, he was an 
example of so high a degree of virtue, magnanimity, and self- 
sacrifice, that he has been justly placed by a profound modern 
speculator among the heroes of his country's annals. 

He was the son of a poor provincial bookseller, and was born 
at Lichfield, September 18th, 1709; afl^ording another testimony 
of that truth so often exemplified in the history of literature, and 
so pithily expressed by an old writer, " that no great work, or 
worthy of praise and memory, but came out of poor cradles." 
He was afflicted, even from his earliest years, with a scrofulous 
disorder, which disfigured a person naturally awkward and un- 
gainly, and this disorder was probably connected with another 
and a more terrible one, which renders it still more wonderful how 
he could have ever attained to such a degree of just reputation as 
he afterwards earned. This was a constitutional tendency to 



CHAP. XIII.] SAMUEL JOHNSON: HIS CAREER STYLE. 243 

melancholy and hypochondria — a "vile melancholy," to use his 
own touching words, "which has kept me mad half my life, or at 
least not sober." What a contrast to the fantastical and inten- 
tional gloom of Young, springing from the ignoble source of dis- 
appointed ambition, and indulged as the best key in which he 
could set his ingenious lamentations over the vanity of human 
things, his sombre conceits, as sadly fantastic as the glittering or- 
naments on a rich man's coffin! What a contrast to the cynical 
asperity of Swift, masking a haughtj'-, sellish, and arrogant pride 
under an affected contempt of human nature, complaining, though 
at the pinnacle of fame, of neglect and unrewarded exertions ! The 
earlier part — nay, by far the greater portion — of Johnson's career 
was passed in obscure and apparently hopeless struggles with 
■want and indigence ; and however these may have enlarged his 
knowledge of human life, or fortified his own powers of industry 
and reflection, they only place in a higher elevation the virtue of 
the man and the intellectual vigour of the great scholar. He passed 
some time at Pembroke College, Oxford, but his father's misfor- 
tunes compelled him to leave the university without a degree. To 
the aspirant after literary fame, to him who takes a wise pleasure 
in tracing the struggles of genius to emerge from a sea of diffi- 
culties, [e\v things are more delightful or more salutary than to fol- 
low step by step the commencement of Johnson's career: — 

" Slow rises worth by poverty oppressed." 

We find him acting as usher in schools, and afterwards unsuc- 
cessfully attempting to conduct a school himself at the little town 
of INIarket Bosworth. Poor, independent, ambitious, conscious of 
his own powers, he now adopted the desperate yet natural resolu- 
tion of launching on the broad ocean of London society, and he 
travelled up to the capital in company with his fi-iend and former 
pupil, David Garrick, who was afterwards destined to obtain, on 
the stage, a reputation as great as that ultimately acquired in lite- 
rature by his companion. Johnson now commenced the profes- 
sion (or rather trade, for at that time it was, alas ! hardly more 
dignified, and certainly not so well remunerated as many mecha- 
nical occupations) of author, obtaining a scanty and precarious 
subsistence by translating and writing task-work for the bookseller, 
and principally employed as a contributor to the 'Gentleman's 
Magazine,' then published by Cave. 

Johnson's style during the whole of his career was exceedingly 
peculiar and characteristic both in its beauties and defects, and 
when he arrived at eminence may be said to have produced a 
revolution in the manner of writing in English ; and as this revo- 
lution has to a certain degree lasted till the present day, it will 
be well to say a [e\v words on the subject. It is in the highest 



244 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIII. 

degree pompous, sonorous, and, to use a happy expression of 
Coleridge, hyper-lalinislic ; running into perpetual antithesis, and 
balancing period against period with an almost rhythmical regu- 
larity, which at once fills and fatigues the ear. Formed upon 
certain of our elder writers (as Sir Thomas Browne, for instance,) 
whose learning and grave eloquence cannot always save them 
from the charge of pedantry, it was a style, like theirs, exactly 
such as might have been expected from a man who had educated 
himself in solitary study, and whose memory was filled with 
echoes of the rhetorical sententiousness of Juvenal or Seneca, and 
the artful and ambitious periods of Sallustor Tacitus. The great 
deficiency of the style is want — not of ease, as has been unjustly 
supposed, for Johnson's strong and nervous intellect wielded its 
polished and ponderous weapon with perfect mastery and free- 
dom — but of that familiar flexibility which is best adapted to the 
general course of disquisition. It would be unjust to Johnson's 
good taste not to remark that he appears to have been sensible of 
the imperfection of his way of writing; for his later works ex- 
hibit a marked and progressive diminution of this stifl^'ness and 
Latinism ; and we may also observe that many of the words 
(generally Latin, as "resuscitate," "fatuity," "germination," 
&c.,) his use of which excited so much criticism at the time, have 
since been completely naturalized and endenizened in the lan- 
guage. The prevailing defect of Johnson's st3'le is uniformity : 
the combinations of his kaleidoscope are soon exhausted ; his peal 
of bells is very limited in its changes ; and as there is necessarily, 
in so artificial a style, an air of pretension and ambitiousness, the 
sameness is more fatiguing than would be the snipped periods and 
tuneless meanness of a more unostentatious mode of expression. 

In 1738 appeared the admirable satire entided 'London,' a re- 
vival of the Thirteenth Satire of Juvenal, m which the topics of the 
Roman poet are applied with surprising freedom, animation, and 
felicity to English manners, and the corruptions of modern Lon- 
don society. 

After the satire of 'London,' of which we shall speak more 
anon, Johnson published his 'Life of Savage,' the biography of a 
poet whose strange and melancholy story formed an admirable 
subject for Johnson's dignified and moral pen; and in 1749 ap- 
peared the pendant, or companion-picture to the 'London,' in a 
similar modernisation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal. Our readers 
may not perhaps know that the Thirteenth Satire of Juvenal is 
directed against the corruptions of society in Rome, against the 
miseries and humiliations which a residence in the great city im- 
poses upon a poor but virtuous man, and the immense riches and 
influence obtained, by the most unworthy arts, by Greeks and 
favourite freedmen. The picture is a striking and impressive 



CHAP. XIII.] JOHNSON: SATIRES. 245 

one, and has lost none of its grandeur in the hands of the English 
copyist, who has with consummate skill transferred the invectives 
of Juvenal to the passion for imitating French fashions, and 
adapted the images of Juvenal to London vices, discomforts, and 
corruptions. In the Tenth Satire (perhaps the grandest specimen 
which we possess of this kind of writing) the Roman takes a 
higher ground, and in an uninterrupted torrent of noble and melan- 
choly eloquence has pointed out the folly and emptiness of all 
those objects which form the chief aim of human desires. He 
shows us successively the misery which has accompanied, and 
the ruin which has followed, the possession of those advantages 
for which men sigh and pray: he exhibits the vanity of riches, 
ambition, eloquence, military glory, long life, and beauty, the 
whole exemplified by the most signal examples, drawn from his- 
tory, of the folly of human hopes, — 

" JMagnaque numinibus Diis exaudita malignis." 

Many passages of Johnson's satires must be regarded as trans- 
lations — consummate translations — of the words of Juvenal; but 
he frequently changes, augments, and strengthens : as, for example, 
Juvenal has instanced Sejanus as a proof of the instability of po- 
litical power and the favour of the great; Johnson has added to 
this impressive picture the fall of Wolsey. Hannibal and Alex- 
ander — whose death forms so instructive a moral of the folly of 
the conqueror and general — are not excluded, but the equally 
warning story of Charles XH. is made the vehicle for a moral 
lesson not less admirably expressed, and even more impressive, 
from its nearness of time, to a modern reader. The lofty philo- 
sophical tone of gloomy eloquence, perhaps, is even more uni- 
formly sustained in the English than in the Roman poet; and in 
the conclusion of the satire, where, after showing the nothingness 
of all earthly hopes, the voice of reason points out what are the 
only objects worthy of the wise man's desire — health, innocence, 
resignation, and tranquillity — the English poet must be allowed to 
have surpassed in pathetic solemnity even the grandeur of his 
model, as far as the consolatory truths of Christian revelation are 
sublimer than the imperfect lights of Stoic paganism. 

Between the years 1750 and 1752 Jolmson was occupied in 
the composition of a journal, or series of periodical essays, en- 
titled 'The Rambler,' founded upon the model of the 'Spectators' 
and ' Tatlers' which Addison and Steele had employed so usefully 
as a vehicle of moral improvement. But in Johnson's hands this 
kind of writing was neither so popular nor so delightful as it had 
been in those of the easy and elegant essayists whom we have 
just mentioned. Knowledge, good sense, sincerity, he possessed 
at least in as high a degree as his predecessors, but the reader ob- 

21* 



246 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIII. 

serves a lack of ease, a want of light and shade, for which not all 
the imposing qualities of Johnson's mind can compensate: the 
style is too uniformly didactic, cathedral, and declamatory; he has 
no shift of words, and will describe the frivolity of a coxcomb 
with the same rolling periods and solemn gravity of antithesis as 
would be appropriate enough in an invective against tyranny or 
fanaticism. But the ' Ramblers' are full of weighty and solid 
sense, and if less amusing, they are certainly neither less useful 
nor less instructive. Addison and Steele talk, Johnson declaims ; 
the former address you like virtuous, learned, and well-bred men 
of the world, whose scholastic acquirements have been harmon- 
ised and digested by long intercourse with polished society; 
Johnson rather like a university professor, who retains, in the 
world, something of the stiflness of the chair. The above re- 
marks will apply no less to the ' Idler,' another publication on a 
similar plan, which continued to appear between 1758 and 1760. 
In the interval which occurred between the discontinuance of 
the former and the commencement of the last-mentioned periodical, 
appeared the celebrated 'Dictionarj' of the English Language,' on 
M'hich Johnson had been laboriously engaged during a period of 
about seven years. This work is a glorious monument of learn- 
ing, energy, and perseverance ; and, when viewed as the produc- 
tion of a single unaided scholar, is perhaps one of the most signal 
triumphs of literary activity. If we compare with Johnson's 
Dictionary the great national work of the French Academy, we 
shall find abundant reason to admire the astonishing courage and 
diligence of our countryman, who alone, unsupported, in the 
midst of other and pressing occupations, found means to produce, 
in seven years, a dictionary certainly not inferior to what was 
considered as a great national monument, which was produced by 
the united labour of a royally-endowed and numerous corporation, 
and which occupied an infinitely longer time in the preparation. 
We must not forget, either, the immense difference between the 
two languages in point of richness and copiousness, which renders 
the task of an English lexicographer immeasurably more onerous. 
Both Johnson's work and the 'Dictionnaire de I'Academie' are 
remarkable for the neatness and acuteness of interpretation of 
words ; both give examples of the various meanings from good 
authors; and in this last respect we conceive that Johnson's work 
is markedly superior; for the Academic contents itself with any 
quotation which exhibits with suflicient clearness the particular 
use of the word in question, but beyond this has no specific value, 
and often no meaning or interest whatever. The quotations em- 
ployed by Johnson, on the other hand, to illustrate and exemplify 
the different significations of words, are not only taken from a 
vast collection of works of classical authority, but themselves con- 



CHAP. XIII.3 JOHNSON : LIVES OF THE POETS. 247 

tain something complete and interesting in itself — either a beautiful 
passage of poetry, a pithy remark, a historical fact, or a scientific 
definition. 'J'he principal defect of this excellent dictionary is 
the elvmological part. When Johnson wrote, the German litera- 
ture could hardly be said to be in existence, and the northern 
languages were consequently not studied; the investigator was 
deprived almost completely of the immense light thrown upon the 
history of our language by those dialects which form the source 
of so important a portion of it. 

In 1759 appeared the famous oriental tale entitled ' Rasselas,' 
a work of no great length, but exhibiting all the peculiarities of 
Johnson's manner. As a representation of Eastern society, or 
indeed as a picture of society in any sense, it has no claim to our 
admiration : there is no interest in the plot, if, indeed, it can be 
said to have a plot — there is hardly any attempt at the delineation 
of character; but if read as a fine succession of moral remarks, 
breathing a somewhat desponding tone of feeling, and conveyed 
in his characteristic pomp of measured declamation — it merits 
more than one perusal. Compared with the descriptions of 
Oriental manners, which more recent times have given us — ' Ras- 
selas' will seem stifl', vague, and unnatural. The Happy Valley 
of the Abyssinian prince is as nothing when compared with the 
Hall of Eblis in the wonderful tale of ' Vathek ;' but we repeat, 
that Johnson's production is not to be read as a novel, but as a 
series of moral essays on a vast multiplicity of subjects, full of 
sense, acuteness, and originality of thought. 

The last work which we shall mention is ' The Lives of the 
Poets,' originally composed at the instance of a bookseller, in 
order to be prefixed to a collection of specimens of this branch of 
English literature. The plan of this work was very limited, per- 
haps unavoidably so, excluding nearly all of the very greatest 
names in our literature, and embracing for the most part only what 
must be considered as by no means the most brilliant period of 
the English Muse, i. e. from Cowley to Johnson's own time. 
With the exception of Milton, all the poets whose biographies he 
has written belong to that school which we have described as 
having grown up mainly under Latin, French, and Italian influ- 
ence — in short, the classicists — in whose works the intellect is 
the predominant power. In judging of this species of poetry, 
Johnson has shown a might, mastery, and solidity of criticism, 
perhaps unequalled by any other author; but the moment he 
enters the enchanted ground of what is called romantic poetry, 
he exhibits a singular and total want of perception. Indeed, his 
mind, admirably adapted as it was for the scientific part of criti- 
cism, was impotent to feel or appreciate what is picturesque or 
passionate. He is like a deaf man seated at a symphony of 



248 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIII. 

Beethoven — a sense is wanting to him. How accurately and 
acutely has he characterised Cowley, Dryden, Pope, and Olway ! 
How justly has he appreciated the more intellectual qualities of 
Milton! But when he ridicules the ' Lycidas,' or complains of 
the blank verse of ' Paradise Lost,' — when he charges the lyrics 
of Gray with absurdity and extravagance, who does not see that 
Nature, so liberal to him in some respects, had denied to his 
powerful mind the least sensibility for what is beautiful and en- 
chanting in the airy world of fancy? 'The Lives of the Poets,' 
when read with due allowance, will undoubtedly remain a clas- 
sical work in England, We shall not easily find so vast an accu- 
mulation of ingenious, solid, and acute observation, so rich a 
treasury of noble moral lessons, or so fine and manly a tone of 
writing and thinking, as this excellent volume contains. Let us 
enjoy what it possesses and can give, without murmuring at what 
it has not. 

Besides the above works, Johnson composed an immense num- 
ber of detached pieces of criticism, and distinguished himself as a 
political writer. Many of his pamphlets (which were always in 
support of extreme Tory or monarchical opinions) obtained great 
celebrity at the time. In 1762 he received the gift of a pension of 
300/. a-year — a just though inadequate reward for the utility of 
his numerous writings, and his unflinching devotion to the cause 
of virtue, religion, and morality. He also published an edition 
of Shakspeare, not very valuable in a philological point of view, 
from his imperfect acquaintance and sympathy with our older 
and more romantic literature, but useful as embodying a large 
mass of notes and illustrations of disputed and obscure passages. 
The character of Shakspeare's genius, given in the preface, is a 
noble specimen of panegyric; and it is singular to see how far 
the divine genius of the dramatist almost succeeds in overcoming 
all the prejudices of Johnson's age and education. As a moralist, 
as a painter of men and minds, Johnson has done Shakspeare 
(at least as far as any man could) ample justice; but in his judg- 
ment of the great creative poet's more romantic manifestations he 
exhibits a callousness and insensibility which was partly the 
result of his education and of the age when he lived, and partly, 
without doubt, the consequence of the peculiar constitution of 
his mind — a mind which felt much more sympathy with men 
than with things, and was much more at home in the "full tide 
of London existence" than in the airy world of imagination — 
among the every-day crowds of Fleet Street, than in Prospero's 
enchanted isle, or the moonlit terraces of Verona. It was this 
positivism of mind (to borrow a most expressive French word) 
that gave him such an extraordinary and well-deserved supremacy 
as a conversationist ; and it was the mixture of learning, benevo- 



CHAP. XIV.] HISTORY OF PROSE FICTION. 249 

lence, wit, virtue, and good sense that makes the admirable por- 
trait of him, Dagiierreotyped in the memoirs of his friend and 
disciple Boswell, the most interesting and living portrait which 
literature exhibits of a great and good man — the perfect embodi- 
ment of the ideal of the English character, with all its honesty, 
goodness, and nobility, rather individualised than disfigured by 
the few and venial foibles and oddities which alloy its sterling 
gold. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE GREAT NOVELISTS. 

History of Prose Fiction — in Spain, Italy, and France — The Romance and 
the Novel — Defoe — Robinson Crusoe — Source of its Charm — Defoe's Air 
of Reality — Minor Works — Richardson — Pamela — Clarissa Harlovve — Female 
Characters — Sir Charles Grandison — Fielding — Joseph Andrews — Jonathan 
Wild — Tom Jones — Amelia — Smollet — Roderick Random — Sea Characters 
—Peregrine Pickle — Count Fathom — Humphry Clinker — Sterne — Tristram 
Shandy and the Sentimental Journey — Goldsmith — Chinese Letters — Travel- 
ler and Deserted Village — Vicar of Wakefield — Comedies — Histories, 

We are nov>^ arrived at that point in the history of British litera- 
ture where, in obedience to the ever-acting laws which regulate 
intellectual as they do physical development, a new species of 
composition was to originate. As in the material creation we 
find the several manifestations of productive energy following 
a progressive order, — the lower, humbler, and less organised 
existences appearing first, and successively making way for kinds 
more variously and bounteously endowed, the less perfect merg- 
ing imperceptibly into the more perfect, — so can we trace a 
similar action of this law in the gradual development of man's 
intellectual operations. No sooner do certain favourable condi- 
tions exist, no sooner has a fit nidus or theatre of action been 
produced, than we behold new manifestations of human intellect 
appearing in literature, in science, and in art, with as much regu- 
larity as, in the primeval eras of the physical world, the animal- 
cule gave way to the fish, the fish to the reptile, the reptile to the 
bird, the beast, and ultimately to man. 

Spain, France, and Italy had all possessed the germ or embryo 
of prose fiction before it can be said to appear as a substantive, 
independent, and influential species of literature in Great Britain; 
and in each of these countries it manifested itself under a diflerent 
form, modified by the character of the respective peoples, the 



250 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIV. 

nature of their language, the character of those antecedent types 
of literature which gave birth to or suggested it, and the state 
of society whose manners it reflected. In Spain, for example, 
arising among a romantic, religious, and chivalrous people, whose 
memory was full of the traditions of Moorish warfare, and pos- 
sessing the acute, impressible, and yet profound intellect usually 
resulting from physical well-being, a considerable degree of poli- 
tical freedom, and a delicious climate, we find it taking the form 
of the romance, full of adventure, and with a splendid prodigality 
of incident; showing traces of its mixed origin in the European 
delicacy of its humour and exquisite sense of the ludicrous, and 
retaining with the numerous episodes (one inserted within the 
other, as in the ' Thousand and One Nights') much of the peculiar 
Oriental structure, together with the Oriental richness of imagi- 
nation, and Oriental profusion and laxity of style. Here we 
have the union of the Castilian hidalgo and the Abencerrage, the 
Goth and the Moor, the lofty sierra and the smooth and luxuriant 
vega. In Italy, again — the Italy of the fifteenth century — we 
find a people highly civilised, elegant, commercial, exquisitely 
sensitive to comic ideas, penetrating, questioning everything, ap- 
plying to their government and their religion the dangerous test 
of ridicule, yet at the same time in the highest degree sensuous, 
with a wonderful and petulant mobility of imagination — at once 
childishly superstitious and audaciously sceptical. Among them 
arises Boccaccio, immortalising himself by a collection of tales, 
short and pointed — alternately drawing the deepest tears and 
moving the broadest laughter — full at once of the grossest in- 
decency and the highest refinements of romantic purity. 

In France, again, we find first the lofty chivalric romance — 
interminable in length, unnatural and exaggerated in sentiments, 
but bearing a general impress of dignity and magnificence — which 
cannot but be held as of Spanish origin. Of this the works of 
Scuderi and D'Urfe are memorable examples. Secondly, we 
find another variety, no less imitated from the Spanish, in which 
the meanest persons of ordinary life are put in motion and pass 
through a long series of amusing though often rather discreditable 
adventures, having no involution of intrigue, and connected toge- 
ther only by the slender thread of their being supposed to happen 
to one person. In this species of fiction (founded upon works 
which the Spaniards call stories " de vida picaresca"' — of raga- 
muffin life — from the general character of the persons and adven- 
tures) the French have surpassed their masters ; for much as a 
careful comparison with the Spanish originals will induce us to 
detract from Le Sage's originality, it will be more than compen- 
sated by his genius, when we reflect how far that admirable 



CHAP. XIV.] PROSE FICTION. DEFOE. 251 

writer is superior to Quevedo, Mendoza, and Aleman, and others 
from whom he so freely borrowed. 

From the above remarks it results that we can establish two im- 
portant and distinct forms of prose fiction, — the one treating of 
elevated persons, either imaginary or historical, and delineating 
serious or important events ; the other dealing with men and ac- 
tions of a more ludicrous, mean, or everyday character — the ro- 
mance, in short, or the novel. The former species derives its 
name from the long narratives which form the bulk of Middle- 
Age poetry, which were generally written in theRomanz dialect ; 
the other from the short prose tales so popular in Italy and France 
at the revival of letters. It is obvious that both these designations 
have almost completely lost their original signification. In Eng- 
land, the romance, besides the qualities just assigned, is generally 
the vehicle of a more artfully constructed and regular plot; while 
the novel by no means implies a shorter work, though one of a 
less grave and ambitious character. In a word, though this dis- 
tinction may be taken as a general guide to the student, and will 
aid him perceptibly in classing these works of fiction, he must by 
no means lake it in too rigid and invariable an acceptation; or, 
rather, he must not be surprised to find works partaking of both 
characters. 

But, in the department of prose fiction, we hope to be able to 
establish for the English literature a claim to a degree of originality 
(originality of the highest order, which is exhibited in the separate 
creation of a distinct type) not inferior to that which our country 
incontestably exhibited in many other departments of intellectual 
development — in the romantic drama, for instance. The father of 
our romance and novel was Daniel Defoe, tlie son of a London 
butcher, born in 1661, and educated with considerable care for 
the profession of a Presbyterian pastor, but which he renounced 
for trade, having during a long and eventful life unsuccessfully en- 
gaged in a great variety of commercial occupations — at one lime 
a hosier, at another a tilemaker, and ultimately a dealer in wool. 
His real vocation, however, was that of a writer, for he produced 
an enormous mass of compositions, generally pamphlets, either 
on temporary and local subjects of political interest, or narratives 
adapted to suit the passing taste of tlie day — in fact, what would 
be styled by a French critic " brochures de circonstance." In 
1699 he published his ' True-born Englishman,' a vigorous poet- 
ical effusion, written in singularly rough and tuneless rhymes, 
containing a powerful defence of William of Orange and the Dutch 
nation ; and in 1702 appeared his celebrated pamphlet, ' The 
Shortest Way with the Dissenters,' an inimitable piece of sarcastic 
irony, in which, to exhibit in a hateful light the unjust and uncon- 
stitutional persecution of the dissenting sects, he puts on the mask 



252 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIV. 

of an adherent of government, and gravely advises parliament to 
make a law punishing with death any minister convicted of ex- 
ercising an unorthodox worship. The government, infuriated by 
the bitter satire, prosecuted the author of the pamphlet, and the 
uncompromising writer was punished by fine, imprisonment, ex- 
posure in the pillory, and the loss of his ears. This suggested to 
Defoe the strong and excellent poem called ' Hymn to the Pillory,' 
a powerful expression of the feelings of outraged liberty and pa- 
triotism. During a two years' confinement in Newgate, our inde- 
fatigable writer conducted a periodical publication entided ' The 
Review,' in which he boldly attacks the arbitrary and oppressive 
conduct of government, and gallantly pleads the cause of liberty 
and the constitution. That Defoe must have had a high reputa- 
tion for honesty and ability is established by the fact that he was 
afterwards commissioned by Queen Anne's government to go to 
ScoUand, in order to influence the Union between that country 
and England ; and he appears to have acquitted himself in this 
delicate mission with remarkable skill, zeal, and dexterity. Of 
this event he afterwards wrote a history. Continuing his course 
as a pamphlet-writer, we cannot be surprised to find him, after 
this temporary blink of sunshine in his fortunes, again imprisoned 
and fined 800/. This confinement, however, did not last so long 
as the former, for he was liberated after two months ; and he now 
appears, either disgusted with the dangerous and ill-requited pro- 
fession of a political writer, or more probably anxious for the wel- 
fare of his own family, to have directed his great powers to a 
different line of literary exertion — one in which he could encoun- 
ter no such persecution as had so frequently overwhelmed him, 
and in which present advantage and popularity were more likely 
to be attained. 

In 1719 appeared the first part of ' Robinson Crusoe,' one of 
the most truly genial, perfect, and original fictions that the world 
has ever seen. It may be said that some of the higii and pecu- 
liar merits of this tale have been the very cause of our not ap- 
preciating its extraordinary qualities as they deserve. It is almost 
universally put into the hands of the very young, and the avidity 
with which its pages are devoured by the childish reader, and the 
never-failing permanency with which its principal scenes, events, 
and characters remain graven on the memory of all who have 
ever read it, prevent us from recurring to its perusal, and thus 
hinder us from applying to the fiction which enchanted our child- 
hood the test of the more critical judgment of after life. Were 
such a test to be generally applied, and were we to examine into 
the means by which those intense impressions — among the in- 
tensest which the memory of childhood can recall — were pro- 
duced, Defoe's name would be regarded with veneration, as that 



CHAP. XIV.] DEFOE : ROBINSON CRUSOE. 253 

of hiin who gave our infant curiosity its healthiest and sweetest 
food, and our infant sensibilities their most legitimate and improv- 
ing action. 

Attempts have been made to deprive Defoe of the glory of 
having invented the subject and outline of ' Robinson Crusoe;' 
and some have even suggested that the novelist merely expanded 
the narrative of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish seaman, left (as was 
a not uncommon punishment among the rude navigators of that 
time, technically called "marooning") by his shipmates upon the 
island of Juan Fernandez, where he passed a long series of years 
in a solitary existence, somewhat resembling the supposed life of 
Crusoe. But apart from the circumstance that the leading idea of 
the work (a shipwrecked solitary in an uninhabited island of the 
tropics) implies no very great stretch of invention, and that such 
an event is at all times exceedingly possible, and was then not 
unfrequent, Selkirk's narrative is extant, and, if compared to the 
fiction of Defoe, triumphantly disproves the accusation above 
staled, and shows us the immense difTerence between a meagre 
statement of bare facts and the powers of creative genius. Where 
shall we iind in Selkirk's narrative (the most striking circum- 
stance of which is the savage and almost bestial state to which 
the unfortunate solitary was reduced) the inexhaustible prodigali- 
ty of contrivance by which Robinson alleviates his long reclusioii, 
his attempts at escape, his hopes, his terrors, his sickness, his re- 
ligious struggles, his sorrows, and his joys? In Defoe we asso- 
ciate with the persons, places, animals, and things of which he 
speaks a reality as absolute and intense — nay, often much more 
so — ^as we do with the true recollections of things and people 
which surrounded us in childhood. If we examine our own memo- 
ry we shall find that the images of Crusoe, of Friday, of Friday's 
father, of the goats, the cats, the parrots, of the corn which Crusoe 
planted, of the canoe which he makes and then finds too heavy 
for him to launch, the cave in which he stows his gunpowder, the 
creek in which he lands in his raft, and in general the whole to- 
pography of the island — we shall find, we repeat, that these im- 
ages are as strong, as intense (and surely, therefore, as real) as 
our recollection of the playthings which we broke, the little plot 
of ground which we cultivated, the nurse who took care of us, or 
the woods in which we went a-nutting. What then is the artifice 
by which genius has worked — for even the divinity of genius 
must work by secondary means — to do this miracle? We reply, 
the admirable causality of Defoe's mind, the courage with which 
he renounces the supernatural, the extraordinary — the intensity of 
good sense which fixed the work in a low key, as it were, deal- 
ing with the most ordinary elements of human character and 
the most everyday operations of nature. He might have made 
22 



254 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIV. 

Crusoe, instead of the plain work-day being that we behold him 
— the mate of a merchantman, an ordinary man, neither wise, 
nor learned, nor ingenious, nor virtuous, beyond the great mass 
of human beings — he might have made him intrinsically {per se) 
more interesting; but would he not have been relativelij less so ? 
In like manner Defoe might have made liis work a vehicle for 
much more extensive information in natural history, physics, as- 
tronomy, &c., than he has dune ; but would it have been equally 
interesting? Tliis question has been settled by all the innumera- 
ble works wliieh have been written on the model of Robinson 
Crusoe, with the laudable object of conveying elementary in- 
struction to the young through the medium of fiction: as, for ex- 
ample, the little book called ' Le Robinson Suisse,' Marryat's 
' Masterman Ready,' ' History of Sir Edward Seaward,' &;c. In 
all these, and they have all much merit, the author has injured the 
effect of his picture by crowding his canvas with figures, and 
represented his shipwrecked families as a great deal too ingenious 
and adroit, and their exertions as too uniformly successful. In- 
the difficulties encountered by his hero, the author has frequently 
represented those as most harassing and as most difficult to be 
surmounted which at first thought we should be apt to consider 
as trifles: thus, for example, the repeated failures of Robinson to 
make an earthenware pot which would stand the fire, or a me- 
chanism by which to turn his grindstone, are certainly difficulties 
which a superficial consideration would by no means suggest, and 
yet which reflection would sliow us were both probable, serious, 
and surmountable only by great exertion of thought and labour. 
In the same way the oversights, mistakes, and want of calcula- 
tion in the supposed hero are exactly such as might, and probably 
Avould, happen to everybody. Robinson Crusoe cuts down a 
huge tree, and with immense labour makes a boat which he can- 
not launch; but Sir Edward Seaward is far too philosophical to 
do such a thing. Robinson uses all his ink, and knows not how 
to make a new stock; but the father of the Swiss family would 
have suggested half-a-dozen ingenious compounds which would 
serve as well, and possibly would have manufactured paper into 
the bargain. But Robinson possesses just the average amount 
of invention, ingenuity, courage, and dexterity, and therefore 
every reader can instantly and unfailingly put himself in Crusoe's 
place. The success of this admirable story was instantaneous 
and immense, and Defoe afterwards published a second part, uni- 
versally and justly considered as inferior to the first. The island 
is changed into a colony ; and the quarrels and labours of the En- 
glish sailors and Spaniards, their battles with the savages, though 
described with Defoe's never-failing animation, simplicity, and 
vigour, fail to interest us like the inimitable history of the Soli- 



CHAP. XIV.] DEFOE : MINOR WORKS. 255 

tary. The conclusion of the work, describing Robinson's voyages 
and return to England, is also comparatively uninteresting, though 
there are to be found in it several passages and episodes described 
wilh impressive power: as, for example, the ship on fire, the 
dreadful scene of the crew dying of hunger, the batUe with the 
wolves, and so on. They are like extracts from the journals 
of some of our old navigators, simple, unatiected, picturesque; 
striking from the natural pathos of the rough but kind and honest 
narrator. 

Defoe now poured forth a profusion of narratives detailing the 
adventures and exploits of noted robbers, cheats and malefactors; 
showing an intimate acquaintance with the habits and thoughts 
of such persons, and giving to his narratives, by the peculiar 
magic of his plain style, all the prestige of reality, a quality which 
no author — not even Swift — ever so perfectly attained. Though 
the persons and actions described in this class of works are 
generally mean and discreditable, Defoe has not fallen into that 
base and corrupting error of more recent literature, of holding up 
to admiration the characters and actions of immoral and dishonest 
men, and making our admiration of energy, perseverance, and ad- 
dress, minister to the worst propensities of our nature, by showing 
these high qualities associated with unrestrained passions and the 
deeds of crime. In his ' Lives' of Moll Flaggon, Colonel Jack, 
Captain Singleton, oic, Defoe has written to warn, not to attract. 
Among the list of these minor works we must not omit his 
•Journal of the Plague Year,' a pretended narrative of the great 
pestilence which devastated London in 1065, written in the 
character of a plain citizen, and eyewitness of the horrors he de- 
scribes. In this terrific narrative, many of the details of which 
are probably real, the verisimilitude is so wonderfully maintained, 
that the book has often been quoted as an authority on the subject. 
As a work of mere descriptive fiction, nothing can be more aw- 
ful more, tremendous, than the hideous phantom of the maniac, 
Solomon Eagle, flitting through the citjMike a messenger of death, 
ihe Great Pit in Aldgate, the Dead-Cart, the apparitions in the 
air, or the silent line of ships stretching down the river " as far 
as I could see." 

To the numerous proofs already alleged of the power, so emi- 
nently possessed by Defoe, of what Scott has happily called 
^'forging the handwriting of nature,'^ i. e. perfectly imitating 
the plain and unafTected air of truthful narration, we have only to 
add that singular triumph of his peculiar skill in this art, his tract 
describing the ' Apparition of one Mrs. Veal, the next day after 
lier death, to one Mrs. Bargrave, at Canterbury, the Eighth of 
September, 1705,' — perhaps the boldest and most adroit experi- 
ment upon human credulity that ever was made. It is needless 



256 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIV. 

to remark that the whole of this admirably contrived story, the 
persons, the place, the minute and familiar details, the exquisite 
solution of the objections to the reality of the apparition, which, 
with an air of inimitable candour, Defoe mentions and refutes — 
in short, the whole thing is a pure creation of the novelist's mind, 
invented to recommend a dull book on death. It cannot be won- 
dered at that this consummate artifice perfectly succeeded, and 
that, to use the sly words of the author, " Drelincourfs book is, 
since this happened, bought up strangely.^'' 

This great and original genius closed his long, useful, and 
agitated existence in 1731, leaving, among the two hundred and 
ten different works which he composed, many which will serve 
the literary student with the finest models of fictitious incidents, 
so naturally and artfully told as to extort the momentary belief of 
the most sceptical; offering the metaphysician the materials for 
solving the abstrusest problems of credibility. 

In the elaborate and once universally read novels of Samuel 
Richardson, we shall see evrdences of a new advance in the art 
of fiction. The leading aim of Defoe is to gratify curiosity through 
the medium o^ faith; and we have just seen that his primary cha- 
racteristic is the admirable skill and certainty by which the author 
excites and maintains in the reader's mind an involuntary and 
irresistible belief in the reality of the things and persons described. 
We find in Richardson the struggle after reality, and the effort to 
inspire belief by natural and minute detail, which in Defoe is a 
primary feature, now become a secondary one; and something 
superadded, viz., the ideal — the creation of character. We have 
passed, as it were, from a lower into a higher class of organization, 
in which the faculties and functions of the lower are not suppressed 
or extinguished ; but those which were prominent and capital 
have become secondary, from the addition of a new and more 
elevated element. We have advanced to another term of our 
sublime progression — that progression which begins at zero and 
rises to infinity. 

All men of great genius seem to be eminendy possessed of 
the quality of good sense; and of this truth Richardson, both in 
his life and writings, offers a striking confirmation. He was the 
son of rustic parents, in the very humblest class, was born in 
1689, and was apprenticed at the early age of sixteen to a London 
printer. In this occupation, not unfavourable (witness Franklin, 
and other eminent men) to the self-education of an active and 
well-constituted mind, he gradually rose to respectability, and 
ultimately to competence and consideration; for he was afterwards 
appointed printer of the Journals to the House of Commons; 
chosen, in 1754, iMaster of the Company of Stationers; and pur- 
chased, in 1760, half the patent or monopoly attached to the lu- 



CHAP. XIV.] RICHARDSON: PAMELA. 257 

crative office of King's printer. Having thus arrived at what must 
be considered as the highest point of an active citizen's career, 
and having by prudence, industry, and probity, accumulated a 
handsome fortune, he retired, in the noon of life, to his pleasant 
suburban retreat of Parson's Green, near London, where he 
passed the remainder of his useful and honourable life. There 
appears to have been, whether derived from nature or only result- 
ing from circumstances, something feminine in his mental organ- 
ization ; for his works show not only a good deal of that sensi- 
tive or rather sentimental melancholy which characterises the 
female mind, but much of the female timidity of taste, the female 
appreciation of minute peculiarities, and also, it is but just to say, 
the female penetration, and the female purity of moral sentiment. 
Indeed, he appears to have passed much of his life among women ; 
for, being early distinguished for his talents as a letter-writer, he 
is related to have devoted his pen, at one period of his youth, to 
the service of three young women in humble life, and to have 
conducted their respective love correspondence. Perhaps this is 
the germ of ' Pamela' and ' Clarissa ;' for the female heart, whether 
bounding beneath the " sad-coloured" gown of the poor maid- 
servant, or throbbing beneath the diamond stomacher of the duch- • 
ess, is invariably and eternally the same. It has been observed, 
too, with great justice, that Richardson's female characters are, 
generally speaking, incomparably superior in depth of observa- 
tion, variety, and naturalness to his men; and we know that one 
of the innocent weaknesses of the great novelist's advanced life, 
when he was full of years and glory, was to receive, like the 
woman-worshipped Krishna of the Indian mythology, the deli- 
cious incense of admiration and flattery from a circle of female 
adorers which he had assembled around him. 

Richardson did not begin to write till he was almost fifty years 
of age; when, being urged by two booksellers to compose a col- 
lection of letters likely to be useful to young people of the lower 
orders, and calculated to purify their taste and inculcate principles 
of morality, he accepted the task for which he was so well quali- 
fied ; and in the course of execution he discovered that his work 
(destined primarily, also, to serve in a great measure as models 
of an epistolary style) might be rendered more natural, amusing, 
and instructive by making the letters tell a story. The result 
was ' Pamela,' an admirable and truly original work of fiction, 
which at once raised its author to an unprecedented height of 
popularity, and instantly annihilated the vogue of those aflfected, 
unnatural, and wearisome romances which till then had formed 
the sole amusement of our great-grandmothers. 'Pamela' (which 
appeared in 1741, said to have been written in three months, and 
five editions of which were exhausted in one year) was, indeed, 

33* 



258 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIV. 

an unspeakable improvement upon the interminable and stilted 
productions which it for ever displaced ; and we can sympathise 
with the delight of a female reader of that day, in obtaining 
a natural story of ordinary life, full of fine perception of cha- 
racter, exquisite pathos and tenderness, instead of the absurd 
exaggerations, the feeble pomposity of incidents, the puerile uni- 
formity of character, and everlasting hair-splitting of amorous 
casuistry, which form the substance of the Cyruses and Clelias 
of the school of Scuderi and D'Urfe. It relates, in letters sup- 
posed to pass between the principal personages of the fable — a 
form of composition from which Richardson never departed — the 
suflcrings and trials of the beautiful heroine, a servant-girl, wlio 
is persecuted by malignity and assailed by seduction, but whose 
virtue and constancy ultimately triumph over all her enemies, and 
gain for the victim the hand of her repentant master. Nothing 
can be simpler, more unpretending, more ordinary than such a 
canvas. The cause of the power over our sympathies is the con- 
summate knowledge of the human heart — and especially the fe- 
male heart — which this excellent author displays, and his wise 
boldness in describing, without scruple and exaggeration, even 
such most trifling incidents (whether external or mental) as such 
a story naturally suggests. 

His first work having been received with a frenzy of admiration 
by the public, and even solemnly recommended from the pulpit, 
it was to be expected that Richardson should continue so auspi- 
cious a career; and in 1749 appeared 'Clarissa Harlowe,' another 
fiction, on a similar though more ambitious plan, and dealing with 
personages in a higher order of society. This work has obtained 
a European glory for its author, and has been universally lauded 
and translated on the continent, and even in France; and indubi- 
tably, as a grand and impressive moral drama, teaching deep les- 
sons of virtue through the tragic media of pity and terror, it de- 
serves all its fame. In England, however, neither this nor any 
other of Richardson's novels can be considered as any longer very 
generally read. Accustomed as we are to a more fiery, rapid, 
liighly-coloured, and wide-awake mode of narration, we have in 
some measure lost our relish for (he manner of this accomplished 
artist, who produces his effect by an uninterrupted accumulation 
of touches individually imperceptible, by an agglomeralive, not a 
generative process. If our great modern works of creative fic- 
tion may be compared to the rapid and colossal agency of volcanic 
fire, the productions of Richardson may resemble the slow and 
gradual formation of an alluvial continent, the secular accumula- 
tion of minute particles deposited by the gentle yet irresistible 
current of a river. If the volcanic tract — the ofl^spring of fire — 
be sublimely broken into thunder-shattered mountain-peak and 



CHAP. XIV.] RICHARDSON: CLARISSA GRANDISON. 259 

smiling valley, yet the level delta is not less fertile or less adorned 
by its own mild and luxuriant beauty. In 'Clarissa,' Richardson 
has drawn with more skill and a firmer pencil than was usual with 
him the character of a man of splendid talents and attractions, but 
totally devoid of morality. Lovelace is familiar to millions of 
readers as an admirably strong and natural combination of the 
most consummate villany with all that can dazzle and impose. 
In general, it may be said that Richardson's men, though often 
marked and individualised by some happy stroke of character, 
rather resemble men as seen by women — that is to say, not as 
they appear to their own sex, but with something of that involun- 
tary inaccuracy which necessarily accompanies the estimate of 
one sex by the other. They are men, but seen through a female 
atmosphere. The pathos in ' Clarissa Harlowe' is carried to an 
intense and almost unendurable intensity, and the catastrophe is 
worthy to be compared, for overwhelming and irresistible agony, 
to the noblest efforts of pathetic conception in Scott, in our elder 
dramatists, or in the Greek tragedians. 

Four years had not elapsed ere Richardson's indefatigable in- 
dustry gave to the world his third and last great fiction, the ' Sir 
Charles Grandison.' In this he endeavoured to give us his ideal 
of the character of a perfect hero — a union of the good Christian 
and the accomplished English gentleman. But Sir Charles, the 
model man of Richardson's imagination, is generally found to be 
exceedingly tiresome and pedantic ; and the heroine. Miss Har- 
riet Byron — a similar model of female perfection — is, like her 
lover, exceedingly cold, tame and uninteresting. In general, we 
must reproach this novel, even in a higher degree than the rest of 
Richardson's fictions, with the fault of inordinate lengthiness. It 
is true that these works, enormous in length as they are, were an 
immeasurable improvement, in this respect as well as in the more 
important qualities of naturalness and interest, upon the egregious 
tomes which they supplanted ; and likewise that, Richardson's 
manner depending upon the progressive accumulation of minute 
incidents and strokes of character, we speedily become involun- 
tarily carried away by the gentle and equable current of his nar- 
ration, and are compelled, as it were by magic, to read every page 
of what we began with reluctance and even with disgust; yet 
this author abuses the liberal concessions of patience which we 
make, and even tlie admirable and truly profound picture of de- 
spair and madness in the unhappy Clementina cannot reconcile 
us to the eternal bowing and formal handkissing of tiresome Sir 
Charles, or the minute and detailed description (occupying Heaven 
knows how many pagesj of the wedding-clothes of the happy 
pair. The fact is, tliat, with that feminine quality which we 
have suggested as characteristic of Richardson's mind, he pos- 



260 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIV. 

sessed also a womanly interest in, and reliance upon, minute and 
trivial incidents, and a womanly admiration for fine clothes and 
the externals of human life. Besides this, he was a man who 
appears never to have mixed in aristocratic society, and the bour- 
geois tone of his mind is as perceptible in his conceptions 
as in his style, which, though always what the Parisians ex- 
pressively call cossii, was at first rather mean and vulgarly fine, 
though he gradually rendered it both more expressive and less 
afl^"ected, for there is a progressive improvement in this respect to 
be traced through his successive works. He was of course per- 
sonally unacquainted with that tone of ease and simplicity which 
always accompanies the intercourse of the higher classes of 
society, in which, as the persons who compose them have no 
fear of being mistaken for what they are not, they have no tempta- 
tion to exhibit themselves other than as they are. With these 
deductions duly made, Richardson will appear to every candid 
mind a great, profound, creative, and, above all, truly original 
genius, devoting a powerful and active intellect to the holy cause 
of virtue and honour, a bright ornament to human nature, and a 
prime glory of his country's literature. 

Perhaps there never existed a character so eminently attractive 
— so emphatically loveable — as that of Henry Fielding, or "poor 
Harry Fielding," as one always calls him in one's own mind. 
As an author. Fielding was at once the complement and contrast 
to Richardson, and in every feature of their personal and mental 
portraits an opposition might be traced out so striking, that such 
a comparison, though perfectly true, would resemble a chapter of 
La Rochefoucauld, or an antithetical sketch from La Bruyere. 
He was descended from an ancient and distinguished branch of 
the higher nobility of England, being the son (born in 1707) of 
General Fielding, and grandson of the Earl of Denbigh. His 
father was a man of gay and extravagant habits, and, dying early, 
left a large family in very embarrassed circumstances. Henry was 
imperfectly educated, first at Eton, and afterwards at the Uni- 
versity of Leyden, where his studies were suddenly interrupted, 
and he was forced to return home, by absolute want of funds — 
" money-bound," as he wittily called it himself. His father dying 
in inextricable difficulties, and leaving his son a nominal income 
of 200/. a-year (for there were no funds from whence it was to 
be paid), young Fielding was compelled, at a very early age, to 
eke out by his own exertions a very scanty income he inherited 
from his mother, and partly from the marriage-portion of his wife 
— Miss Cradock, a beautiful and most amiable person — whom he 
appears to have loved with an intensity of affection such as such 
an object was likely to inspire, and so passionate a temperament 
as Fielding's to feel. But Fielding was an ardent lover of plea- 
sure, and totally incapable of economy, calculation, or self-denial: 



CHAP. XIV. 3 fielding: JOSEPH ANDREAVS. 2ffl 

he lived in a style totally inconsistent with his means, thinking 
only of the present moment, and in three years found himself 
completely ruined. During this time he had obtained precarious 
and scanty assistance by writing for the stage; and his dramatic 
compositions form about a third part of his collected works. 

They are chiefly vaudevilles and light comic or farcical pro- 
ductions, such as were the fashion of the day, and they form a 
melancholy proof of Fielding's total inaptitude for the stage. It 
is singular to see that Fielding's creative power, which in the 
novels has given us such numberless conceptions of human cha- 
racter, should be totally wanting in these pieces, in spite of the 
bold, careless vivacity with which they are written. To this re- 
mark there is but one exception — the admirable burlesque of 
'Tom Thumb,' a gay and farcical extravaganza, ridiculing (as 
' The Rehearsal' had done before, and as Sheridan's ' Critic' was 
to do afterwards) the absurdities and affectations of the style of 
tragedy in vogue at the time. 

He was now totally ruined ; but, with many other features of 
the French national character, he possessed much of that versa- 
tility of talent for which our continental brethren are so celebrated, 
and, above all, their contentedness of disposition and gaiety under 
every change of fortune. " His happy constitution," says Lady 
Mary Montagu, his kinswoman, "even when he had, with great 
pains, half demolished it, made him forget every evil when he 
was before a venison pasty and a flask of champagne; and I am 
persuaded he has known more happy moments than any prince 
upon earth. His natural spirits gave him rapture with his cook- 
maid, and cheerfulness when he was starving in a garret." It 
was not till 1742, i. e. when Fielding had reached his thirty-fifth 
year, that he began that career of glory as a novelist tiiat will 
continue till time shall be no more, as long as men shall delight 
in wit, humour, originality, and art. At this period the ' Pamela' 
of Richardson was in the full blaze of popularity, and Fielding 
was exactly the man to appreciate the ludicrous sides of the book 
which every reader was devouring witii rapture. The man of 
fashion, the gay prodigal, the hunter after pleasure, intimately 
versed in all the mysteries of human life, who had moved with 
good-natured careless ease through every orbit of the social system, 
whose exquisite sense of character must have made him accurately 
observe every shade of human manners, and whose inexhaustible 
sympathy with his kind made him share the joys, the distresses, 
and the humours of every class of society, and whose easy laxity 
of morals held as venial any trespasses on propriety so long as 
they were accompanied and excused by a generosity and manly 
liberality of feeling — such a person must have looked upon 
Richardson's famous novel as fair game for ridicule and bur- 



262 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. CcHAP. XIV. 

lesque. The printer's choice of an humble heroine, his vulgarity 
of style, his citizen-like inculcation of strict morality and the 
tamer virtues, his homely incidents, and, more than all, perhaps, 
the atmosphere of sentimental melancholy thrown over the whole, 
and the elaborate painting of the mental sufferings and the deli- 
cate sorrows of a female heart — all this suggested to Fielding 
the happy idea of a parody or burlesque. Scarron immortalized 
himself by the ' Roman Comique,' written to parody the effemi- 
nate affectations, the romantic fictions of his time; and the 'Jo- 
seph Andrews' of Fielding, though written to caricature a par- 
ticular author, has not only in a great measure tended to render 
that author obsolete, but must be considered as the foundation of 
a new species of writing — the addition of a new province to lite- 
rature — the opening of a new source of intellectual delight. How 
disproportionate are sometimes effects to their causes ! the sight 
of a soldier scraping his rusty musket was the proximate origin 
of the art of mezzotint, and the parody of a popular novel was 
the generating influence of Fielding's admirable fictions! In 
' Joseph Andrews' the wicked wit of Fielding gave the public a 
most irresistible caricature of 'Pamela:' to add to the piquancy 
of his attack he represents his hero as the brother of the primly 
virtuous Pamela, and resisting the amatory advances of his mis- 
tress. Lady Booby. This picture of virtue triumphant in a young 
footman, is irresistibly comic ; and the after adventures of Joseph 
Andrews, when turned out of his place, and wandering through 
England with his friend, the never-to-be-forgotten Parson Adams, 
give noble earnest of the wonderful fertility, freshness, and vigour 
of the creative intellect that was to give us so many hours of 
mirth and amusement. Nothing can be more different than the 
manner of the two great writers: in reading one you seem to 
breathe the close and heated atmosphere of a city parlour; in the 
other you are tramping, a sturdy pedestrian, along an English 
high-road, inhaling a fresh, bracing, vigorous breeze, and mixing 
with the ever-varying groups of passengers, or laughing soundly 
out with the odd vagabonds you encounter, now in a foxhunter's 
andered hall, now with the picturesque, if not always very repu- 
table, figures smoking and drinking round an alehouse fire. In 
Richardson your ear is perpetually filled with the rustle of a pet- 
ticoat — in Fielding it is struck by the loud roar of the rustic wag, 
or the lusty knock of a stout crab-tree cudgel encountering some 
peasant's skull. The character of Adams would be enough to 
immortalize even the grand 'Cyrus' itself: his goodness of heart, 
poverty, learning, ignorance of the world, combined with his 
courage, modesty, and a thousand oddities, make it a portrait to 
be placed beside that of Sancho Panca or My Uncle Toby. 
After this excellent and original work, Fielding, who had now 



CHAP. XIV.] FIELDING : TOM JONES. 263 

found his true literary element, and who must have enjoyed, in 
tracing liis ever-varying scenes and personages, the unspeakable 
rapture of genius, published his ' Journey from this World to the 
Next,' a half-narrative, half-satirical production, not deserving of a 
more than passing allusion. This was succeeded by the ' Life and 
Adventures of Jonathan Wild the Great' — a fiction in which, un- 
der the mask of describing the history of a notorious cheat, robber, 
and thief-taker, executed about that time, he has given us a fine 
satiric invective. The principal character is so utterly odious, so 
mean as well as so atrocious a scoundrel, that the reader can feel 
no sympathy with him, and therefore no interest in his story ; but 
there are several inimitable scenes and characters — for instance, 
the Ordinary of Newgate, who prefers punch to wine, " the rather 
as it is nowhere spoken against in the Scripture," and the inimita- 
ble sermon on the text, " To the Greeks, foolishness." 

In 1749 appeared his greatest work, ' Tom Jones,' which has 
been translated into every civilised language. Fielding had a high 
opinion of the importance of the novel in literature ; he placed it 
on a level with the epic : and we cannot accuse him of indiffer- 
ence to that gravity of the task which he considered so dignified — 
the profession of the novelist. Perhaps in no other work do we 
find such avariety of events, each exquisitely probable and amusing, 
all converging so infallibly to a catastrophe at once inevitable and 
surprising. A great part of the adventures of this, as of Fielding's 
other works, take place in inns and on the road; a circumstance 
to be accounted for by the much greater duration of journeys in 
those days, when men travelled mostly on foot or on horseback, 
and consequently spent more of their time in journeys. This has 
tended to increase the tone of coarseness with which we, accus- 
tomed to much more refined habits of society, should be at first 
liable to reproach the great novelist, whom Byron calls " the prose 
Homer of human nature." He may also be charged, and justly, 
with a very low standard of moral rectitude and virtue. His he- 
roes, never deficient in generosity and courage, are generally very 
coarse in taste, and not over delicate or scrupulous; as, for ex- 
ample, in that degrading episode of Jones and Lady Bellaston. 
We always conceive his heroes as stout, fresh, broad-backed young 
fellows, with prodigious calves ; and his heroines are singularly 
deficient in ladylike attributes. But hardly any author in the 
world has succeeded in giving interest to the accomplished young 
lady and charming young gendeman who form the nucleus of their 
intrigue; the jeune premier and ingenue are as insipid in fiction 
as on the stage and in real life : and if Fielding has failed where few 
or none have succeeded, he has made ample amends in the vast 
crowd of admirable impersonations which are recalled to our me- 
mory by the mere mention of his name, — Partridge, Towwowse, 



264 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIV. 

Adams, AUworthy, Trulliber, Squire Western, Square, Thwackum, 
Ensign Northerton, and a thousand more. Nor would it be grateful 
in us to forget the rich and constant stream of animal spirits, fresh 
and abundant as a mountain spring, sparkling as champagne, ever 
bubbling up, as it were, from the perennial fount of good-nature 
and humanity which God had created in the generous heart of 
Fielding; nor his easy command of a vast store of knowledge, 
both of books and of the world ; nor his simple, vigorous, unaf- 
fected English ; nor the tenderness of his healthy sensibilities. 

In 1749 he was appointed, by the patronage of Lord Lyttelton, 
to the office of a London police magistrate ; and however we may 
regret the necessity which obliged such a man as Fielding to fulfil 
duties so inconsistent with his literary pursuits, and in an office 
which at that time was neither very well paid nor over reputable, 
it not only gave him many opportunities of exhibiting remarkable 
zeal, activity, and address as a public functionary, but possibly 
furnished him with some of those strokes of low life and humour 
which enrich his admirable writings. 

The death of his wife plunged the generous and impressionable 
heart of Fielding for a time into the deepest despair ; but, with 
that facility of temper which so strongly characterised him, he not 
long after consoled himself by marrying his late partner's favourite 
maid, with whom it had been his only relief, during the first poig- 
nant agonies of his bereaval, "to mingle his tears, and to lament 
together the angel they had lost." His second wife, however, 
strange as it may appear, proved a most faithful and excellent 
partner, and a good mother to his children ; and the warm afTection 
of Fielding soon after erected, in honour of his first wife, the com- 
panion of his early struggles, the noblest and most enduring monu- 
ment that genius ever consecrated to love and grief. This was 
the romance of 'Amelia,' in which the exquisite picture of conju- 
gal virtue and feminine charm in the heroine, the character and 
even the infidelities of Booth (her husband), and a multitude of 
minor persons and events, are evidently transcripts from reality, 
and (there is little doubt) faithful copies of his own early history. 
' Amelia' is a delightful and touching work : its interest is intimate 
and domestic: and whatever diminution of gaiety and movement 
may be perceptible in it, when compared to either of its two great 
predecessors, is more than made up by the calmer, tenderer, and 
more home-speaking tone which reigns throughout its pages. The 
characters are touched with consummate skill; Colonel Bath is a 
perfect masterpiece : and many of the scenes — that, for instance, 
at Vauxhall, the appearance before the magistrate, the adventures 
in prison, and so on — are drawn with Fielding's usual vivacity 
and skill. > 

Fielding's constitution was now quite broken up, partly with 



CHAP. XIV. ][ SMOLLETT. 265 

his early irregularities of life, and partly by his severe exertions 
both as a magistrate and as a writer ; and having been ordered by 
his physician to try a warmer climate, he made a voyage to Lis- 
bon. Of this expedition he has left a journal, in which we see the 
last faint glow of his admirable genius, and the undiminished gaiety 
and good humour of his character, glimmering through the clouds 
of sorrow and disease. He set out for Lisbon in the spring of 
1754 ; and, after lingering till October of the same year, he expired 
there of a complication of disorders (among which (biopsy was the 
chief), and was buried in the cemetery of the British Factory in 
that city. vTo conclude this notice in the solemn and majestic 
language of Gibbon : " Our immortal Fielding was of the younger 
branch of the Earls of Denbigh, who drew their origin from the 
Counts of Hapsburg, the lineal descendants of Eitrico, in the 
seventh century Dukes of Alsace. Far dilTerent have been the 
fortunes of the English and German divisions of the family of 
Hapsburg; the former, the knights and sherilfs of Leicestershire, 
have slowly risen to the dignity of tlie peerage; tlie latter, the 
Emperors of Germany and Kings of Spain, have tlireatened the 
liberty of the Old, and invaded the treasures of the New World. 
The successors of Charles V. may disdain their brethren of Eng- 
land ; but the romance of ' Tom Jones,' tliat exquisite picture of 
human manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial and the 
imperial eagle of Austria." 

The field of prose fiction, so vigorously and productively cropped 
by Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, was rather fertilised than 
exhausted ; and put forth another and hardly less luxuriant har- 
vest of novelty and wit in the hands of Tobias Smollett, whose 
genius, though perhaps of a somewhat lower order than that of 
his two great and immediate predecessors, was not less rich and 
inventive, and certainly not less permanently popular, his works 
appealing to those faculties of the mind which are most universal 
— the sentiment of the ludicrous and the grotesque, and the avidity 
for surprising yet natural adventure. This great but unhappy 
man (for what misfortune is more deplorable than an irritable and 
querulous temperament?) was born in Dumbartonshire, in Scot- 
land, in the year 1721, and was educated by the kindness of a 
grandfather. Having passed some time, as an apprentice, in the 
service of one Gordon, an apothecary of Glasgow, he journeyed 
up to London, a poor, unfriended, and probably uncouth Scottish 
lad, with the intention of supporting himself as a literary man, 
and carrying with him his manuscript of a tragedy entitled 'The 
Regicide.' This work, the production of an inexperienced youth 
of nineteen, was totally unsuccessful ; and after struggling for 
some time with failure and distress, which the infallible instinct 
of genius must have rendered peculiarly bitter, he underwent the 
23 



266 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIV. 

examination of surgeon's mate, and accompanied in this capacity 
tlie ill-fated expedition to Carihagena. If ' Roderick Random' 
and ' Peregrine Pickle' could not have existed without their auihor 
having mingled in the scenes which he portrays, who can com- 
plain of the price at which Smollett purchased his fame ? or would 
Smollett himself have held that glory as bought too dear ? 

On his return from that disastrous expedition in 1746, our 
author continued for some time the career of a miscellaneous 
writer, and generally of political pamphlets of a very fierce and 
virulent complexion ; for Smollett's temperament was almost mor- 
bidly irritable, and his numerous changes of party were the results 
rather of personal feeling than of any very solid convictions on 
public or abstract grounds. He published a number of satires 
and other pieces, in which sincerity of invective and great ease 
of fancy are the most conspicuous merits. The verses, however, 
entitled 'The Tears of Scotland' are powerful and pathetic ; and 
many of the lines in his ' Ode to Independence' have a tine lyric 
grandeur of impersonation. 

It was not until 1748 that he published his 'Adventures of 
Roderick Random,' and the world at once perceived that a great 
and original novelist had appeared, likely to show that the fertility 
of English genius in prose fiction was not exhausted, and capable 
of disputing the crown of supremacy with Fielding himself. Na- 
ture, the image and shadow of God, is, like Him, infinite; and 
Art, the idealisation of Nature, and the sublimest emanation from 
the Divinity, is, like its parent, boundless. There can be no 
doubt that Fielding was a far superior artist to his admirable suc- 
cessor. His plots are infinitely finer, more far-reaching in their 
conception, and carried on with more skill, coherence, and pro- 
bability. Smollett can hardly be said to have a plot at all: his 
works are a succession of adventures which have no other con- 
nexion than as happening to one hero ; they can be no more said 
to be parts of a whole, conducing to a natural and distant catas- 
trophe, than the successive images of a magic-lantern to form a 
dramatic series of pictures like the Marriage a la Mode, or the 
Harlot's Progress, of Hogarth. They are thrown togedier ; they 
do not grow together: they are not an organisation like Fielding's, 
but a mere juxtaposition. Indeed, so intense was the objective- 
ness of Smollett's fancy, so completely was he identified with 
the specific scene of drollery which was in hand — so " totus in 
ilia" — that he perpetually sacrifices to their efiect the consistency 
of his characters; never scrupling to represent his hero, for ex- 
ample, as cowardly, ugly, or contemptible, provided by so doing 
he can augment the comicality of the incident. The view of life 
to be derived from the fictions of Smollett is not a very consoling 
nor a very elevating one: the instances of generous feeling and 



CHAP. XIV.~| RODERICK RANDOM PEREGRINE PICKLE. 267 

self-sacrifice are chiefly assitrned to personages incessantly placed 
in a ludicrous light; as, for instance, tlie faithful Strap, wlio exhi- 
bits much more delicacy than his unfeeling and ungrateful master : 
and if, as seems more than probable, Roderick Random is a true 
embodiment of Smollett's own London reminiscences, and Strap 
a real character, the author has indirectly convicted himself of a 
degree of selfishness which, it is but just to say, the whole tenor 
of his life disproves. But his great force lies in the vivid and 
ever-new delineation of comic incidents of a broad and farcical 
cast, and the outrageous oddities of those numerous characters (or 
Avhat may be called natural caricatures) which anybody may find 
swarming in society. In one class of these oddities he is unri- 
valled — sailors. Ilis own experience in the navy brought him in 
contact with this class of men (a class still distinguished in Eng- 
land by marked peculiarities, and at that time formin»a perfectly 
distinct and peculiar species, little known to their countrymen), 
and gloriously has Smollett worked this new and fertile vein of 
singularity. Tlie rude kindness, the fidelity, the contempt for 
money, the ignorance of the world, the courage, superstition, and 
all the habits of the English seamen (a type as strongly individual 
as the vieux moustache of the Old Guard, or the backwoodsman 
of the Far West), are described under a dozen different forms 
M- ith a verve and animation showing the author's profound know- 
ledge of the subject, and producing the most intense delight in the 
reader. What a number of names arise at the mention of Smol- 
lett's admirable sailors ! — Li'eutenant Bowling with his cudgel, the 
choleric Ap-Morgan with his toasted cheese and family pride. 
Admiral Trunnion on his wedding expedition, and the ingenious 
and taciturn Pipes. Nor are sailors the only portraits which 
attest a master-hand : the low characters of every kind — prosti- 
tutes, sharpers, tipstaves, and all the vermin of society — are vividly 
and amusingly delineated. 

The next novel produced by Smollett was 'Peregrine Pickle,' 
strongly resembling, in its merits and deficiencies, the work which 
preceded it. If the adventures of Peregrine are still more dis- 
creditable than those of Roderick, and the character of the hero 
even less respectable, ample amends are made by the side-splitting 
humours of Admiral Trunnion, Hatchway, and Pipes, with their 
amphibious household, and the drollery of many incidents of the 
hero's travels in France, not forgetting the irresistible supper in 
the manner of the ancients, which 

" Would move wild laughter in the throat of death." 

At two successive intervals of two years he produced his third 
fiction, entitled ''i'he Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom,' 
and a translation of ' Don Quixote.' The former work resembles 



268 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. CciIAP. XIV. 

in its plan and execution his previous novels, with the difference, 
however, that it is pitched in a much higher key of moral inipres- 
siveness, and was intended less to amuse by the oddity of the 
incidents, than to give an impressive picture of the certain degra- 
dation and gradual descent of infamy that follow a youthful neglect 
of honour and generosity. It may in some sense be called a com- 
panion-picture to Fielding's 'Jonathan Wild,' But Fathom is far 
superior in ijiterest to Fielding's hero — not personally, it is true, 
for he is as base and contemptible a rascal as the other, but from 
his superior dexterity and address, and from the consequent greater 
variety of his adventures. He is a heartless scoundrel, who, after 
becoming a gambler and '■'■ chevalier d'industr.ie,''^ dies in misery 
and despair. Despite of the gloomy and discouraging tone which 
prevails through this picture, some of the scenes (as for instance 
that admiral)le one in which Fathom is rooked at play in a French 
coffeeliouse by a more adroit sharper disguised as a raw booby 
English squire) are fidl of Smollett's usual vivacity. The trans- 
lation of ' Quixote' — the most untranslatable of all books — is 
also a failure: it wants tliat picturesque and romantic tone which 
is so great a charm in the original — that tenderness of feeling in 
the midst of, and modifying, the wildest extravagance of gaiety, 
which forms as it were the atmosphere of the southern humour, 
and distinguishes alike the frantic wit of the old comedy of Greece, 
the broad burlesque of the primitive Italian stage, and glows with 
such a steady and yet subdued radiance through the pages of the 
gentle Cervantes. Smollett's 'Don Quixote' wants sun — the sun 
of La Mancha. 

During a considerable portion of his life, Smollett had been 
unsuccessfully struggling to establish himself as a physician ; he 
was for some time the principal writer in the 'Critical Revievv,' 
one of the first progenitors of that class — now so numerous in 
England and elsewhere — of periodical publications devoted at 
once to political disquisition and the criticism of books. For 
this dangerous trade Smollett possessed no qualifications but those 
of sincerity, learning, and genius; and though his strictures were 
never dictated by an unworthy motive, they were strongly and 
involuntarily coloured by personal feelings, and raised around our 
impatient and thin-skinned author a swarm of hornets — enraged 
doctors, offended politicians, and, more venomous and implacable 
still, the insulted vanity of literary pretension. For some severe 
remarks on tlie conduct of Admiral Knowles, Smollett was con- 
victed of a libel, imprisoned for a considerable time, and fined 100/. 
During his confinement he composed 'Sir Lancelot Greaves,' 
a most unfortunate attempt to transfer to the England of the 
eighteenth century that admirable picture which Cervantes had 
drawn of Spain in the sixteenth. In such a state of society, and 



CHAP. XIV.] MINOR WORKS HUMPHRY CLINKER. 269 

anion<T such a people, as that of Spain in the days of Cervantes, the 
existence and adventures of the Don were neither impossible nor 
even at all inconceivable; but what shall we say of a young Eng- 
lish squire of good family setting out (in the reign of George II.), 
attended by an old sea-captain for his Sancho Pan^a, for the re- 
dress of wrongs, with the chivalrous language and even the arms 
of Quixote? The madness of the Spanish hero, drawn with so 
delicate and reverent a hand, affects only a particular class of his 
mental perceptions, and is, besides, perfectly conceivable when 
taken into consideration with the age, the position, the limited 
education of a poor country gentleman of Spain ; but the mad- 
ness of Greaves, affecting a mind and body otherwise sound, a 
handsome, virtuous, and enlightened Englishman (in so unro- 
mantic an age and country too), is a mania which renders him fit 
for Uedlam, and excites our pity rather than our sympathy. Such 
be the inevitable fate of imitation ! 

Smollett, after this, composed a continuation of Hume's 'His- 
tory of England,' said to have been written in fourteen months ; 
and after a journey through France and Italy, in which his sple- 
netic disposition, probably aggrava.ted by ill health, found no 
language but contempt with which to speak of the great monu- 
ments of ancient art, he published 'The Adventures of an Atom,' 
a satire upon his former patron, Bute. In 1770 ill health again 
drove him abroad, and he resided some time at Leghorn, where 
he died, October 21st, 1771. Thus, like his great predecessor 
Fielding, this admirable novelist expired in a foreign land. 

During the year of tranquillity which Smollett passed in the 
delightful climate of Italy, the genius of this great writer shed its 
last and most genial ray; it was like the setting sun, pouring forth 
a calmer and gentler radiance as it sank below the horizon. It 
was here that he composed 'Humphry Clinker,' the richest and 
most exquisite picture of English manners which his pen had ever 
delineated. It is a tale related in letters, supposed to be written 
by the admirably-contrasted members of a family visiting the then 
fashionable watering-place of Bath; and the adventures, irresisti- 
bly comic in themselves, receive a double power over our laughter, 
and sometimes over our tears too, when seen, as it were, through 
the medium of the characters who describe them. The irritable 
but benevolent Bramble (a portrait of Smollett himself), with his 
querulous richness of imagination, the never-to-be-forgotten Mrs. 
Tabilha and Winifred Jenkins, the simplicity of Humphry Clinker, 
and the humours of Lismahago — all these make the novel equal, 
if not superior, to the finest productions of Smollett's meridian 
genius. 

There are few ereat names in literature whose intellectual and 

.... 
personal character present such a tissue of inconsistencies and 

23* 



270 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [ciIAP. XIV. 

paradox as the life and writings of Lawrence Sterne. Both as a 
man and as an author, there is in this truly original person such 
a union of apparently incompatible merits and defects, that it is 
impossible not to feel all our systems of moral and intellectual 
speculation completely at a loss when applied to him. 

Sterne was bora in 1713, at Ulonmel, in Ireland; and was the 
son of a lieutenant of an infantry regiment. But though the fu- 
ture author of the ' Sentimental Journey' came into the world in 
very poor and unpromising circumstances, his mother's relations 
(many of whom were rich English clergymen) not only secured 
liim a good education — finished at Jesus College, Cambridge — 
but also pointed out the ecclesiastical profession as his future path 
in life. Sterne, on entering orders, obtained the living of Sutton, 
in Yorkshire, to which he afterwards added a prebendary of the 
cathedral in the same archbishopric ; and he ultimately acquired 
by marriage the presentation to another preferment in the Church. 
Neither his life nor his character, however, was more in accord- 
ance with his sacred functions than his face or writings — the fea- 
tures of Sterne being strongly comic, marked with a most singular 
mixture of penetration, gaiety, and an almost morbid sensibility; 
■while his unfeeling conduct to his wife, and his perpetual squab- 
bles with his brother clergymen, were as little in accordance with 
the susceptibility he vaunted as with the character of a country 
pastor. It was one of these squabbles that gave Sterne the op- 
portunity of displaying his satiric humour; for his first work was 
a pamphlet, in which, under a burlesque history of a village up- 
roar about a "good warm watchcoal," he made so droll and se- 
vere a reflection on tlie greediness for reversionary preferment 
exhibited by one of the Yorkshire clergymen, that the person 
ridiculed is said to have relinquished his claim on condition that 
Sterne would suppress the pasquinade. In it one may see the 
dawn, the embryo, of much of his peculiar manner. 

In 1759 our author visited London, carrying with him the two 
first volumes of 'Tristram Shandy,' which excited, on their ap- 
pearance, such a tumult of enthusiasm, that the writer immedi- 
ately ascended to the sunimil of popularity, and was urged by 
universal acclamation to continue the book; two more volumes of 
which were given to the world in 1761, and again two more the 
year following. This eagerness of the public cannot be attributed 
to the same cause which made the ladies besiege Richardson wilh 
prayers to finish his ' Clarissa,' viz., intense interest in the story, 
and eagerness to learn the catastrophe; for in Sterne's fiction 
there is absolutely neither plot nor catastrophe to learn; and one 
of the principal oddities of the book, and chief sources of the im- 
pression it produced, was that it cannot be called a story at all, 
seeing that it iias not one of the Aristotelian requisites — a begin- 



CHAP. XIV.] STERNE : TRISTRAM SHANDY. 271 

nino-, a middle, or an end. Its charm consists in the easy, ram- 
bUng style, in tiie exquisite touches of pathos and humour that 
alternately glow and sparkle through its pages, in the familiarity 
established between the reader and the fantastic gossiping author, 
and, above all, in the delicate and masterly delineations of its 
many admirably conceived characters. In this last respect there 
is something Shakspearian in Sterne's manner ; and he, like the 
greatest creator of character that the world has ever seen, develops 
and depicts the personage rather by words than actions — rather 
by unconscious self-betrayals than by elaborate description. Much 
of the popularity of the book arose — at least when it appeared — 
from the fearless novelty of the style, full of breaks and interrup- 
tions, abrupt and exclamatory rather than continuous, which, 
though certainly in part natural, was also in some measure a trick 
of art. This peculiarity at first gives a great charm and raciness, 
but soon rather offends than pleases; for we speedily perceive that 
it is, like the perpetual interruptions and digressions, a piece of 
mechanical artifice. 

The obscure erudition which so astonished the readers of 
Sterne's time^ when the study of the Middle-Age literature was 
accounted a barbarous pedantry, will now be found neither very 
accurate nor very extensive ; and we now perceive that this 
author, apparently so original in his form, was one of the most 
unblushing plagiarists that ever wrote, borrowing incessantly from 
Katelais and Burton, and owing, indeed, nearly the whole of his 
imagery to those authors, even now little, and then never, read. 
Coleridge has acutely remarked, that the character of Mr. Shandy 
in this novel is an embodiment of pure intellect, and that of My 
Uncle Toby an impersonation of unmixed goodness of heart; 
and an amusing parallel might be made between these two admi- 
rable characters and Panurge on the one hand and Pantagruel on 
the other — the chef-cVceuvres of the immortal romance of the 
cure of Meudon. Sterne must claim all the merit of individual- 
ising these conceptions, of bringing them down from the airy 
regions of burlesque to the familiar reality, the flesh-and-blood 
consistency of common life, of incrusting them in the ordinary 
incidents and manners of the English society of the day, and of 
surrounding them with a train of minor personages, as exquisitely 
real, individual, and varied as ever were imagined by the fancy 
of genius — Mrs. Shandy, the ideal of non-entity, a character 
profoundly individual from its very absence of individuality ; 
the choleric and uncliaritable Dr. Slop, Yorick, Obadiah, the 
Widow Wadman, and Susannah. Toby and Corporal Trim are 
two noble portraits of goodness and gentleness, sketched in with 
most delicate strokes of Humour's own pencil, and glowing with 
the iris tints of tenderness and pity. How identical are the 



272 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIV. 

chief elements of these two characters, and yet how admirably 
are they distinguished ! 

The perpetual digressions, interruptions, blank and marbled 
pages which abound in Sterne, produce at first an air of oddity 
and surprise, which soon merges into something like contempt; 
but the innumerable effusions of true pathos, the exquisite rela- 
tions of simple and affecting incidents, will remain for ever a 
deep and peculiar charm, and be his title to a durable glory. At 
two different periods Sterne made a tour on the continent, first 
to France, and afterwards to France and Italy; and found no 
diflficulty in appending his impressions of foreign manners to the 
desultory pages of 'Tristram Shandy.' These impressions are 
often read separately as 'The Sentimental Journey,' a little volume 
full of the most charming strokes of tenderness and wit, which 
has obtained a European reputation. With the exception of some 
passages of too warmly-coloured description (a defect rendered 
more dangerous by the delicate and romantic tone of Sterne's 
writings, and one from which none of his works are free), this 
volume justifies the author's reputation ; and he particularly de- 
serves our praise for the gentle and cosmopolite- spirit which 
makes him perceive and appreciate the peculiar merits of other 
nations, and do justice not only to their arts and their triumphs, 
but even to the amiable peculiarities of their national character 
and manners. This Sterne laboured to do, and both England 
and France have well rewarded him. Many of the episodes of 
this singular writer are familiar to all readers, and these are 
generally the most pathetic passages: the picture of Captivity, 
the Dead Ass, Maria, the Story of Lefevre, the Sermon read by 
Trim, and a thousand others, immediately recur to the reader's 
memory : these are the most popular, because they are the most 
intelligible to all. But he who should confine liimself to these 
would form a very imperfect notion of Sterne's literary and in- 
tellectual portrait. The comic passages must be read also; and 
the conversations of Mr. Shandy, Toby, and Trim, the numerous 
soliloquies and artful betrayals of the minutest shades of character, 
must be studied ere we can form a true notion of the singularly 
complex idiosyncrasy of the author, or the delicate brilliancy of 
his style. 

Sterne died in 1768, in London, whither he had gone to super- 
intend the printing of his 'Sentimental Journey;' and it is not to 
be wondered at that the flattery which he received, acting on 
an impressible temperament, should have weakened a character 
naturally neither very virtuous nor very firm. His health had 
been during nearly his whole life exceedingly precarious ; and 
though his writings show the warmest and lenderest glow of 



CHAP. XIV.] goldsmith: his character. 273 

feclino- and generosity, his life was by no means in accordance 
with such sentiments. 

If the writins^s, and particularly the character, of Sterne be found 
to possess a strong resemblance to the national idiosyncrasy of 
the French people and genius, Oliver Goldsmith must undoubtedly 
stand for the most complete embodiment, the bean ideal, of the 
artist character. This we see in every act, both good and bad, 
of his romantic life, so full of vicissitudes, of glory and distress, 
of folly and generosity, of profound ignorance of the world and 
deep though transient impressibility, of genius and of shame, of 
childish vanity and tender wisdom. Much of this arises, doubt- 
less, from his Irish birth ; and the^e is not a greater contrast than 
between the lives and characters of the two illustrious friends who 
were at the head of the literature of their day, Johnson and the 
author of ' The Vicar of Wakefield.' The one is the very person- 
ification of the Englishman, the other of the Irishman. Both 
starting from an obscure and humble origin, both struggling through 
the early part of their career with every obstacle, Johnson emerged 
from the " sea of troubles" which threatened to overwhelm him 
by the simple vigour of moral and intellectual energy; Goldsmith 
floated above the waves by the innate buoyancy of a careless and 
happy temperament: one was a strong swimmer; the other was 
the stormy petrel. Goldsmith was the son of a poor Irish curate, 
whose utmost exertions could hardly give bread to a large family; 
and was born in July, 1728, at the village of Lishoy, in Longford 
— a village afterwards immortalised in one of his most exquisite 
productions. He was partially and very imperfectly educated by 
the kindness of his uncle, Mr. Contarine, who sent him to Dublin 
University, where the youth distinguished himself by a number 
of freaks evidencing an almost incredible want of prudence and 
common sense, and proved not only in some instances the romantic 
generosity of his heart, but a total incapacity to resist the tempta- 
tion of the moment. After having been ignominiously dismissed 
from the university, he was again received, obtained, though not 
without difficulty, his degree, and, having chosen — as far as such 
a tiioughtless person could be said to choose — medicine as his 
profession, he set out to travel to Leyden, where he did study 
some time ; and wandered nearly over the whole of Europe, prin- 
cipally on foot, supporting himself in some measure by charity 
and by his flute. In this way he visited nearly all the principal 
places in France, Germany, Holland and Flanders. This vaga- 
bond and gipsy life was perfectly in harmony with his sensitive 
and expansif churacier, and may indeed be considered — whatever 
its bad effects upon the excitable heart and weak moral principles 
of this child of genius — as singularly fortunate for his glory. It 
is assuredly in the lower classes of mankind that fiction will find 



274 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIV. 

its richest and most accessible materials. The liquid notes of his 
own flute, had he touched it with tlie finest finger, breathe not a 
sweeter air of feeling, a more touching and tenderer melancholy, 
than do his writings when the theme is the goodness and happi- 
ness of the poor. 

On returning to England in 1756, he began to write for the book- 
sellers, and obtained a precarious subsistence by contributing to 
the ' Monthly Review.' With a moderate degree of economy and 
foresight, Goldsmith's charming style would have soon enabled 
him gradually to obtain. competence as a writer ; but economy and 
foresight were words unintelligible to " poor Goldy," whose Irish 
heart could never resist the temptation of vanity or pleasure for 
himself, or of an almost insane liberality to others. He was him- 
self exceedingly fond of fine clothes, had the fatal propensity of 
the gambler, and his heart was so extravagantly tender, that he 
perpetually gave his last guinea to the first object which awakened 
his morbid sympathies. Thus devoid of care for the future, and 
yielding to present impulses, his benevolence was neither just to 
himself nor useful to others ; and he may be charged with heart- 
lessness and ingratitude to those who had the greatest claims on 
his assistance and respect. The same cause kept Goldsmith al- 
ways poor and plunged in debt ; and though he remained for 
many years the most admired and popular writer of his time, he 
never ceased to be a bookseller's hack, and closed a life of fruit- 
less and severe exertion in indigence and ruin. 

In 1758 he attempted to pass the medical examination qualify- 
ing him as surgeon's mate in a ship of war, but was rejected ; and 
so poor was he at this time that he was obliged to borrow a suit 
of clothes from a bookseller to appear in before the court, which 
suit he afterwards pawned. A letter is still preserved, written by 
him to the person he had so dishonestly deceived, full of the most 
passionate expressions of despair. 

It was now that he commenced that rapid succession of easy 
and delightful writings, in prose and verse, which have rendered 
his name so dear to all who appreciate unafl^ected grace, delicacy 
and humour. We shall specify only the more remarkable. The 
'Chinese Letters,' afterwards known under the title of ' The Citi- 
zen of the World,' are full of the sweetest touches of character, 
and are written in a truly attractive and pure style. Goldsmith's 
manner of writing resembles, at least in those points which are 
not peculiar to him, at once that of Addison and that of Steele ; 
but possessing a warmer and more genial tone than the writings of 
the former, and an infinitely greater purity and elegance than 
those of the latter. It is more transparent than Addison, less 
prim, less formal ; and far fuller of sentiment, more ideal, than 



CHAP. XIV.] THE TRAVELLER VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 275 

anything of Steele's, between whose character and Goldsmith's 
there was a strong resemblance. 

Goldsmith then wrote a short and familiar ' History of Eng- 
land ;' a mere compilation as to the matter, but related in such ex- 
quisitely easy and amusing language, that it is a model of the art of 
narrative. Johnson said justly that Goldsmith could make even 
the driest and most repulsive subject " as amusing as a Persian 
tale." And certainly nothing but his inimitable ease and grace of 
narration could make us forgive — as we do in spite of ourselves 
— the shallow crudeness of his learning, and the total want of 
grasp and system in his views. 

It was now that appeared the first of his two memorable poems, 
' The Traveller,' a meditative and descriptive work, embodying 
the impressions of human life and society which he had felt in his 
travels and in his early struggles. Neither the ideas nor the im- 
agery are very new or striking, but it is exquisitely versified (in 
the rhymed couplet) ; and its ease, elegance, and tenderness have 
made many passages pass into the memory and language of soci- 
ety. It is peculiarly admirable for the natural succession and con- 
nection of the thoughts and images, one seeming to rise unforcedly, 
and to be evolved, from the other. It is also coloured with a ten- 
der haze, so to say, of soft sentiment and pathos, as grateful to the 
mind as is to the eye the blue dimness that softens the tints of a 
distant mountain-range. It is a relief to the reader after Pope, in 
whom the objects stand out with too much sharpness, and in 
whom we see too much intense activity of the mere intellect at 
work. Pope is daylight ; Goldsmith is moonlight. 

In 1766 appeared the immortal tale which all the world has 
read, translated and admired — ' The Vicar of Wakefield.' The 
subject is nothing. A worthy, simple country parson is reduced 
to the deepest and most unmerited distress, and again restored to 
happiness. But the charming character of the hero — a kind of 
more refined Parson Adams — the exquisitely drawn portraits of 
his family, the natural incidents, the true and tender pathos, and 
the gentle humour — who knows not these ? The style is perfec- 
tion itself; and the adventures, though not always quite probable, 
are sufficiently so to maintain the reader's interest. 

In the following year Goldsmith, as if not contented with the 
glory of being the most delightful narrator and the finest painter 
of character of his day, now aspired to the more poignant rapture 
of theatrical applause. His first comedy was ' The Good-natured 
Man;' and the hero was undoubtedly a dramatised portrait of the 
author himself, with his unthinking easiness of temper, and his 
culpable imprudence and generosity. The piece has the defect 
chargeable against many similar works, particularly on the French 
stage, namely, the taking of some mental quality as the subject. 



276 OUTLINES or general literature. [chap. XIV. 

around which are grouped ihe inferior characters and interests, and 
which the dramatist has an irresistible and incessant temptation to 
exaggerate and caricature. This is not so injurious to nature and 
probability (the prime requisites of comedy) when the species of 
folly chosen is of a graver and more reprehensible kind, when it 
is a vice, in short, instead of a mere absurdity ; but when it is a 
mere obliquity of taste, the more forcible and vivid the delineation, 
the less interest do we feel in it. Harpagon is always amusing, 
because we detest as well as laugh at him ; but the weakness of 
Arnolphe in the ' Malade Imaginaire,' though we may laugh heart- 
ily at the oddity of the incidents and dialogue, is not of sufficient 
solidity and consistency to carry the weight of a comic plot. But 
'The Good-natured Man' is lively and gay, and some of the infe- 
rior characters, particularly Croaker, are touched with a humour 
that makes us pardon the rather tiresome uniformity of Honey- 
Avood's exaggerated generosity and self-abnegation. 

The year 1770 gave to the world the companion poem to 'The 
Traveller,' ' The Deserted Village,' a work similar in tone, but 
immeasurably superior in distinctness of aim and felicity of idea. 
It depicts the sentiments of a wanderer, who, on return to his 
native place, which he left a smiling pastoral hamlet, finds nothing 
but ruin and desolation, or relics of former happiness more sad 
and painful still. " Sweet Auburn" is supposed to have been 
painted from Goldsmith's own recollections of the village of 
Lishoy, where his brother had the living ; and as ' The Deserted 
Village' is more distinct and concentrated in its subject, and more 
homely in its details, than ' The Traveller,' it is incomparably 
more touching and more beautiful. Goldsmith was one of the 
first English poets of this age who had taste and feeling enough 
to rely for eflect upon simple and unornamented descriptions of 
natural, ordinary objects and persons. He threw aside all that 
false and vulgar afTectation which thought it necessary to clothe 
such objects in a parade of declamatory language; and his poem 
is exquisitely pathetic. He — and the numerous great men who 
followed him in this true conception of poetical art — did nothing 
else but restore the manner of our greater and more ancient 
writers, who find, in the commonest and most familiar images, an 
inexhaustible source of the most powerful emotions — the tenderest 
beauty and the sublimest terror. 

Not very long after this poem appeared 'She Stoops to Con- 
quer,' one of the most amusing comedies which the English stage 
possesses. The action of this piece is exceedingly animated and 
laughable, and the absence of any moral aim, the renunciation of 
any attempt to draw, in a principal or leading character, a portrait 
of some particular folly, is singularly advantageous to its eflect, 
however it may degrade the work as a psychological embodiment. 



CHAP. XV.] GOLDSMITH. THE GREAT HISTORIANS. 277 

The personages are very numerous, and sketched with felicity ; 
the booby Squire and his pot-house companions, the prosy and 
hospitable Mr. Hardcastle, his foolish wife, and the equivoques 
produced by Marlow's extravagant bashfulness — all these, if not 
of the higher order of comedy, are abundantly laughable and well 
managed. 

In concluding our remarks on this author, it will only be neces- 
sary to mention a number of histories written merely as book- 
sellers' task-work — mere compilations as regards the matter, but 
exhibiting Goldsmith's never-failing charm of style: this circum- 
stance, together with the absence of any very oppressive degree 
of erudition, has rendered them peculiarly well adapted for class- 
books in schools ; a place they will retain till the more accurate 
and profound method of modern historical investigation shall have 
been communicated even to the elementary instruction of the 
young. Besides the 'History of England,' Goldsmith success- 
ively published that of 'Rome,' of 'Greece,' and of 'Animated 
Nature,' the last being for the most part a condensation of 
Buffon. 

Our industrious writer (whose life was embittered, notwith- 
standing his gi-eat reputation, activity, and success, by perpetual 
debts and difficulties) died in 1774, having hastened, if not pro- 
duced, his own decease, by injudiciously and obstinately taking 
a powerful medicine ; and left behind him a reputation as well 
deserved as it is universal. There are very few branches of 
literature which he had not cultivated, if not with unparalleled, at 
least with more than ordinary success. In all he was above 
mediocrity, in some he reached excellence, and in one work (the 
delightful 'Vicar') he has left us a masterpiece of originality and 
grace. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE GREAT HISTORIANS. 

David Home — As Historian — As Moralist and Metaphysician — Attacks on Re- 
vealed Religion — William Robertson — Detects of the " Classicist" — Histori- 
ans — Edward Gibbon — The Decline and Fall — Prejudices against Christianity 
— Guizot's Judgment on Gibbon. 

The character of the English people is marked by singular in- 
consistencies : there is no nation which exhibits so much reluc- 
tance to pursue to their utmost consequences the deductions of 
24 



278 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XV. 

any new system or chain of arguments. The English tempera- 
ment is at once bold and timid ; at the same time penetratingly 
far-seeing, yet almost slavishly devoted to prescription and au- 
thority. Nowhere is a new theory in legislation or in science 
more freely and candidly discussed; nowhere the true sifted from 
the false with a more industrious activity ; nowhere does a new 
truth find a more enlightened and ready acceptance; but, at the 
same time, nowhere is there a greater dread of innovation, or a 
more determined adherence to tlie forms of particular systems or 
institutions. 

Of these remarks tlie story of David Hume is a striking exam- 
ple. He was sprung from an ancient and noble Scottisii family, 
and was born in 1711. The greater part of his life was passed 
abroad, chiefly in France. Hume was happy and tranquil in the 
possession of an income so small that hardly all his national pru- 
dence sufficed to make it a competence. What is still more to 
his honour, he supported, during the early part of his literary 
career, a degree of neglect and failure which the consciousness of 
his talents must have rendered exceedingly bitter — this severe 
trial he bore, if not without a deep and very pardonable discou- 
ragement, yet with great manliness and dignity. His first work, 
' A Treatise on Human Nature,' published in 1737, was received 
with absolute neglect; and though recommended by an exquisite 
refinement of style, and by great novelty of views, and a bold 
acuteness of argument, it " fell still-born from the press." Five 
years after this appeared his ' Essays, Moral and Philosophical,' 
which contained a great variety of refined and original specula- 
tions, often on subjects previously considered as " hedged in" and 
defended by an insurmountable barrier of sanctity and prescrip- 
tion. During this part of his life he appears to have had most 
difllculty and discouragement to struggle with; for he was for 
some time obliged to accept the most painful of human occupa- 
tions, the charge of a madman. This was the young Marquis of 
Annandale, in attendance upon whom the future historian remained 
a year. Hume was soon afterwards appointed to the post of 
secretary to General St. Clair, whom he accompanied, first to 
Canada, and afterwards in his embassy to Vienna and Turin. In 
1751 was republished, under the tide of 'An Inquiry concerning 
the Principles of Morals,' much of the substance, though now 
considerably altered and almost recast, of the not very popular or 
successful treatise which had appeared fourteen years before : and 
about this time he gave to the world his 'Political Discourses.' 
Having caused himself to be appointed librarian to the Faculty of 
Advocates in Edinburgh, an office which he fulfilled gratuitously 
for the opportunity of making use of the books under his care, he 
now entered upon a new path, a path in which he was to more 



CHAP. XV.] HUME : HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 279 

than redeem the ill success of his former publications — that of 
History. In 1754 appeared the first volume of his 'History of 
Great Britain,' containing the reigns of James I. and Charles I. 
This new attempt was for a while not more popular than his pre- 
vious ones,t)ut, in proportion as the succeeding volumes appeared, 
the public admiration grew ever stronger and stronger, and Hume 
was soon placed, by the unanimous applause of his countrymen, 
at the head of all the English historians who had tlien written. 
This reputation he deserved for many rare qualities, for his philo- 
sophic views, and for his exquisite style : and though History has 
received in more recent times a very different form, a much wider 
spirit of inquiry and investigation, a far more comprehensive, mi- 
nute, and accurate spirit, as well as a more picturesque and striking 
language, there can be no doubt that Hume's work is of great 
beauty and value. Its chief defects are want of accuracy in de- 
tail, and strong partialities affecting various important principles. 
A polished and fastidious scholar, a Scotsman of aristocratic birth 
and sympathies, Hume was tinged not only with those Jacobite 
tendencies which were so prevalent in the higher classes of his 
country, but with an exaggerated dread of popular movements, 
and an indisposition to acknowledge the undeniable advantage 
which our constitution has so often and so uniformly derived from 
revolutions. A monarchist in principle, he entertained a some- 
what extreme opinion as to the paramount importance of stabilifi/ 
in any system of polity, forgetting that in the case of the British 
constitution a gradual and steady progressive movement was in- 
herent in its very essence — was its sap and life-blood ; and that, 
so far from its stability being compromised by popular movements, 
or even by revolutions, these were its very conditions and vitality. 
The English character has more in common (at least in its politi- 
cal manifestations) with that of the Roman people than with that 
of any other great and civilized nation with which history has 
made us acquainted. The resemblance is overwhelmingly striking 
when we take into account the immense difference between the 
political constitutions of the two countries. Both, however, were 
(;minently aristocratic, and in both the principle of stability is 
surprisingly prominent — a stability so far from being diminished 
by incessant internal agitations, and even considerable organic 
changes, that these changes and agitations are its very exponents. 
Montesquieu has well remarked that movements which in other 
countries would infallibly involve a complete overthrow and possi- 
ble reconstruction of the whole political machine, in England are 
considered, and justly so, as a proof of the vitality of the govern- 
ment. And the same thing is true of Rome, at least during its 
earlier and more glorious period. Both nations are eminently 
practical, logical, and calculating, and in both the attachment to 



280 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XV, 

old institutions goes only so far as to make the citizens distrust 
the prospective advantage of any proposed innovation : in other 
words, never to admit an innovation until forced on them by cir- 
cumstances. Tluis the perpetual changes which were going on 
in the body politic were no more destructive to its intlividuality, 
nor injurious to its strength, than are the changes of the seasons 
to the growth of some majestic tree. Its leaves may be strewn by 
the gales of autumn, the vernal sap may rise within its vessels, 
incessant deposits of new matter and never-ceasing loss of old 
may continue, till not a particle of substance in the whole living 
structure may remain the same after the lapse of a few years, yet 
the tree is still the same, it is one, and no other, and man and 
beast find shelter under its ever-waving boughs. 

We have already given Hume credit for a philosophical spirit. 
This he undoubtedly possessed, but only to a certain degree. 
His mind had early accustomed itself to abstract investigations, 
and his long residence in France had contributed to develop in 
him a tendency to those barren and endless speculations which 
characterised the French literature of the period. Acuteness he 
undoubtedly possessed to a high degree, as well as a sincere love 
of truth: but his mind was cold and unsympathising ; it wanted 
humanity, that deep fellow-feeling with his kind, which is the 
only vivifying and fecundating principle. In his philosophy he 
had reached that point at which all is negative: he doubted of 
everything; he doubted even of the conclusions obtained by 
means of his own refined dialectics ; and if this species of Pyrrho- 
nism could ever become generally prevalent, nothing would be 
left to man but the gratification of sense and the prosecution of 
mere temporary interests. But there is a point beyond this: in- 
deed, a man who stops here halts on the very threshold of the 
great temple of wisdom. He who has never doubted (at least in 
matters of human reason) cannot be said properly to believe ; and 
he who believes not can feel no perfect love. In his hi&tory 
Hume has taken too much upon trust from former compilers, and 
he has consequenUy fallen into a great many errors in points of 
fact, and been guilty of strange oversights and misrepresentations. 
Too indolent to consult, and too falsely refined to appreciate, the 
authentic sources of history in the writers contemporary with the 
events he describes, he has given us a work which is indeed a 
model of easy, fluent, agreeable narration, but a work which, if 
compared to many more modern productions of history (as for 
instance the admirable ' Conquete d'Angleterre paries Normanils' 
of Augustin Thierry), will afford an incontrovertible proof of the 
immense advance made since his time in this branch of literature. 
His strong predilections in favour of the Stuart race have led him 
into innumerable errors and contradictions, and the whole of one 



CHAP. XV. 1 irUME : MKTAPHYSICAL WRITINGS. 281 

most important episode in English history, the Civil War, tlie 
Republic, and the Protectorate, is full of inconsistency. This 
great and noble monument of Hume's genius appeared as follows : 
— the first volume in 1754, the second in 1757, the third and 
fourth in 1759, the fifth and sixth in 1762. From what we have 
said above, it may easily be inferred that Hume was unreasonably 
addicted to paradox and theorising on false or insufficient grounds. 
Moreover, his hostility to the doctrines and authority of the Chris- 
tian religion led him to describe in one uniform tone of con- 
temptuous indifference the labours and sufferings of many of those 
illustrious men who have sealed with their blood the charter of 
their country's liberty. Religion, so intimately interwoven with 
the whole tissue of private life in England, is a no less prominent 
element in all public and political events; and a historian, there- 
fore, wiio should feel no sympathy with the religious convictions 
of some section or other (it little matters which) of the English 
people, might indeed avoid party prejudice, but could never suc- 
ceed, be his genius what it may, in giving a true picture of events. 
" He had early in life," says Mackintosh, "conceived an antipa- 
thy to tiie Calvinistic divines, and his temperament led him at all 
times to regard with disgust and derision that religious enthusiasm 
or bigotry with which the spirit of English freedom was, in his 
opinion, inseparably associated : his intellect was also, perhaps, 
too active and original to submit with sufficient patience to the 
preparatory toils and long-suspended judgment of the historian, 
and led him to form premature conclusions and precipitate theo- 
ries, which it then became the pride of his ingenuity to justify." 
As a moralist and metaphysician, Hume is less remarkable for 
any novel or original views in the investigation of fundamental 
principles than for the admirable clearness and elegance of his 
mode of reasoning, for the candour with which he admits objec- 
tions, the acuteness — always tempered by courtesy and good taste 
— with which he combats them, and above all for the courage 
which he exhibits in carrying to their ultimate results the argu- 
ments which he uses. His chief test for the moral value of an 
action or a motive is the principle of utility — a principle into which 
must be, after all, resolved all questions of right and wrong. It 
is one which has in all ages excited the greatest outcries against 
every philosopher who has ventured overtly to propound it; and 
yet it is obvious that all systems professing to assign different 
inundations for good and evil human actions are nothing else, when 
closely examined and carried to their ultimate application, than 
fruitless attempts to mask under specious forms a doctrine which 
to an unenlightened mind appears selfish and incompatible with 
elevated emotion. In stripping off the bandages of error and pre- 
judice which envelop, like some Egyptian mummy, the body of 

94* 



282 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. CcHAP. XV. 

moral truth, ordinary investigators content themselves willi stop- 
ping at a secondary point. They are afraid to look face to face 
upon what they think is a corrupted and loathsome corpse ; but 
if we clearly understand the principle, and properly limit its ap- 
plication, we shall find not only that all other modes of account- 
ing for what we so unreasonably consider the invariable sentiment 
of right and wrong are insufficient, but that this is the only con- 
ceivable and possible way of explaining the existence of that sen- 
timent at all. 

Hume is considered also as one of the most dangerous and 
insidious enemies by whom the Christian religion has ever been 
attacked. The point against which his batteries are chiefly 
levelled is the credibility of the history of those miraculous events 
on which the religion founds its claim to be considered as a reve- 
lation, i. e. a supernatural interposition. The ground he takes is 
broad and simple : the nucleus of his arguments is to be found in 
the two famous ])roposilions, 1st, that it is contrary to human 
experience that miracles should be true ; 2d, that it is not con- 
trary to experience that human testimony should be false. This 
mode of reasoning it was quite natural that he should adopt, inas- 
much as his philosophy is altogether of the negative and sceptical 
character: but at the same time his reasoning lies open to a pow- 
erful counter-argument — viz. that, if the essential incompetency of 
any degree of evidence be so great as to overbalance any force of 
probability, then that the convincing power of any arguments ad- 
dressed to our minds must labour under an equal degree of uncer- 
tainty. 

All evidence, whether addressed to our senses (often the most 
fallacious reporters) or to our reason, is comparative, and never 
can reach the intensity of abstract certitude, for God alone can 
be capable of absolutchj knowing anything : all that remains is 
the question of comparative weight between the probability of the 
given event and the degree of evidence before us (an imperfect 
evidence, but an evidence which is all that ice require or can 
appreciate) ; in short, it is a striking of a balance between two 
conflicting improbabilities. There is moreover a fallacy in the 
stating of the two celebrated propositions above quoted, and also 
something like a petitio principii ; for, in the first place, the use 
of the words "experience" and " contrary to experience" would 
induce us to imply a contradiction fatal to the whole argument; 
seeing that, if miracles entered into the ordinary operations of na- 
ture (i. e. were subjects of experience), they would no longer be 
miracles at all; and it is clear that a revelation cannot be founded, 
as regards the evidence of its reality, on anything else but mira- 
cles, that is to say on events which are deviations from the ordi- 
nary laws of nature. Whatever of dangerous is contained in 



CHAP. XV.] ROBERTSON. 283 

tliese argiimenls of Hume, whatever of mischief they may have 
done to the minds of inexperienced investigators, is to be attri- 
buted less to their intrinsic weight and cogency than to the blind 
and bigot zeal of many of his answerers, who, in fervour of arro- 
gant orthodoxy, have replied to Hume's arguments by reproaches 
and the ill-simulated language of contempt, combatting his cool 
and skilful attacks with threats, slanders, and childish declamation. 
Those who have not acuteness enough to overthrow the logician 
are often contented to calumniate the man : and the hand which 
cannot wield the sword can always guide the dagger. Against 
personal attacks Hume found his best defence in the innocence 
and benevolence of his life, in the respect of the great and the 
Avise of all countries, and in the affection of his own private 
friends. He gradually rose to the dignity of Under Secretary of 
State, and soon retired from public life with a moderate, but to 
him abundant fortune, and, after living many years in tranquil and 
lettered ease, he died in 1776 in Edinburgh, his native city. 

Our remarks on the life and works of William Robertson, the 
next celebrated name in the department of History, will be very 
short. His story is a very simple one; it is the record of a man 
of pure and virtuous life, interchanging the obscure but arduous 
duties of a Scottish pastor with the labours of an ardent and en- 
lightened scholar — a career fertile in active benevolence, in the 
unceasing fulfilment of quiet duties, and in the calm satisfactions 
of literary usefulness, but presenting little materials for the nar- 
rator. 

It is singular that two out of the three great historians of this 
period should have been Scotsmen, that they should have produced 
extensive works of great and durable value under circumstances 
apparently very unfavourable to this kind of composition, and 
that their style should have strong points of general resemblance 
in its purity, elegance, and clearness. We can warmly agree 
with the sentiments of Walpole, who expresses his admiration 
and surprise that Robertson, then an obscure country clergyman, 
without access to any extensive sources of information, should 
liave produced works equally distinguished for learning and accu- 
racy, written in the purest and most classical English. This ex- 
cellent historian was born near Edinburgh in 1721, and cannot 
be said to have acquired much fame until the appearance, in 1759, 
of his ' History of Scotland during the Reigns of Queen Mary 
and James VI.' This work not only opened to its amiable au- 
thor the road to eminence and distinction, but what is of more 
advantage to us, encouraged him to persevere in a line so auspi- 
ciously begun. In 1769 he published his 'History of the Reign 
of Charles V.,' and six years afterwards the 'History of America,' 
the three great pillars of his fame. All these books are distin- 



284 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [ciIAP. XV. 

guished by an elevated and noble tone of. feeling, contain many 
clear and reasonable if not very profound views of the important 
epochs in human history which they portray, and deserve the 
highest possible eulogy for the refined elegance and grace of their 
style. Robertson's mind, though calm and meditative, was full 
of a sincere and well-regulated enthusiasm for all that is noble 
and good, and he has related with manly pathos the touching 
story of the beautiful and unhappy Mary, and the yet sublimer 
woes of that great navigator whose genius gave a world to un- 
grateful Spain. But with all this grace of style, with a harmony 
so liquid and so gentle that its art is occasionally somewliat too 
perceptible to the reader, we cannot fail to perceive a sort of 
smooth uniformity — not a monotony of tone, but a uniformity of 
treatment — in works detailing the annals of such different ages 
and countries. There is no distinction between his handling of 
these so different subjects ; we do not find an individuality in 
his portraitures of sucli widely-difiering states of society — and it 
is undoubtedly in that individuality that we must seek for the in- 
valuable quality of picturesqueness, whether in literature or art. 
It would be difficult, almost impossible, for any dulness of narra- 
tion to deprive of interest such subjects as the story of Mary 
Queen of Scots, the character and abdication of Charles V., or 
the discovery of America ; and yet we cannot disguise from our- 
selves an unpleasant feeling that Robertson does not place him- 
self, and consequently the reader, among the persons and events 
which he describes. To sympathize deeply with these, and to 
appreciate them profoundly, the reader ought to be made to breathe 
the atmosphere of the particular age and country in question. He 
ought not to gaze down upon them from the chilly heights of ab- 
stract philosophic speculation ; he should mingle with them to a 
certain degree on a level. In the ' History of America,' for ex- 
ample, the author seems to have taken his materials at second 
hand, preferring (or perhaps obliged by circumstances) to obtain 
them filtered through the medium of previous compilations — a 
process in which, even when performed by the most skilful hand, 
a vast proportion of the raciness and spirit must inevitably eva- 
porate. It is possible that Robertson was afraid of injuring the 
finish of his execution by admitting, in all their rude and vigorous 
animation, the picturesque details of old chroniclers and contem- 
porary narrators, as, for example, the narratives of Bernal Dios 
and the Conquestadors. In Hume this absence of the peculiar 
tone and spirit of the age arose in a great measure from indolence 
and a philosophic (a falsely philosophic) indifference to those de- 
tails of social life, art, religion, and popular feeling, which not only 
are characteristic of the particular age or people, but are abso- 
lutely the only things that we wish to know ; for the scaflblding, 



CHAP. XV.] gibbon: decline and fall. 285 

the skeleton of history is pretty universally the same : what we 
desire to recall is not the battles, treasons, and coronations, for 
battles, treasons, and coronations are almost always the same 
thing ; in evoking past ages from the tomb, it is not the bones, 
but the flesh and blood, the life, that we would behold ; not a 
spectre, but 

Our fatliers in their habit as they lived. 

The third, and unquestionably the greatest, of our English 
historical triad was Edward Gibbon. He was a man of good 
family and easy circumstances, and was born at Putney, near 
London, in 1737. He received an excellent education, and even 
passed some time in the University of Oxford ; but he employed 
his early years in desultory and multifarious study, which, though 
it gave him the materials for future eminence in literature, was 
tiseless for any immediate object. His attachment to the Protest- 
ant faith was also so much shaken about this time by contro- 
versial reading, that he became a convert to the Popish religion, 
on which his father sent him to reside with M, Pavillard, a Pro- 
testant minister at Lausanne, whose, arguments were so conclusive 
that the young convertite again returned to the bosom of his 
national Church. A religious faith, however, so subject to change, 
could not have been very solid, and Gibbon's works afterwards 
gave abundant proof that his convictions of the truth of the evan- 
gelic history were by no means deeply rooted in his mind. In- 
deed he soon became a confirmed sceptic. While at Lausanne 
he pursued a regular and steady course of study, and seems to 
have adopted the opinions which were so prevalent just before 
the outbreak of the first French Revolution. Nor is this to be 
wondered at: his mind appears to have been strikingly similar in 
its principal features to the character of the Encydopediste intel- 
lect ; the same acuteness and activity, the same confidence in its 
own powers, the same distrust of the virtue and disinterestedness 
of mankind, and the same tendency towards the actual and sen- 
suous rather than the abstract and the ideal. \\\ 1758 he returned 
to England, and gave the first fruit of his reading in a little essay, 
written in French, on the Study of Literature : and during great 
part of the war he held the commission of captain in a body of 
militia. Four years afterwards he again visited the continent, 
where he passed a considerable time in travelling through France 
and Italy, and it was during these wanderings that he first con- 
ceived the idea of his great work. The incident, so eventful in 
the annals of English Literature, took place at Rome, October 
15th, 1764, and is immortalised in his own picturesque words : 
"As I sat musing," he says, "amidst the ruins of the Capitol, 
while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of 



286 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XV. 

Jupiter, the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first 
started to my mind." But so gigantic a task was not to be 
executed, or even begun, without immense preparatory labour, 
and without the author passing through a period of uncertainty 
and vague agitation when determining upon the plan, the extent, 
the arrangement, and even the style of the work. He returned 
to England in 1765, and, on the death of his father. Gibbon, who 
had come into possession of an embarrassed fortune, ultimately 
entered upon a political career. During all this time his great 
plan was working and fermenting in his head, and he underwent 
those throes and struggles which genius ever feels in giving birth 
to a mighty and durable offspring. These he has related, and 
described how long it was ere his subject arranged itself before 
his mental eye in a definite form and with intelligible order and 
completeness : he has told us how often he was tempted to 
abandon in despair the accumulated materials of years of study; 
how he composed the first chapter three times, and the second 
and third twice over, ere he was satisfied with their effect. Such 
is the training of genius, such are the labours by which alone 
great productions can be created. 

Gibbon was elected in 1774 member of Parliament for the bo- 
rough of Liskeard ; but though he sat for many sessions in the 
House of Commons, he never ventured to take part in the de- 
bates : his knowledge and intellectual powers were very great, 
nor was he unconscious of his own gifts, but his taste was fas- 
tidious, and his habits were those rather of the man of letters 
than of the statesman. He sat, therefore, invariably silent, filled, 
as he says, by the good speakers with despair of imitation, and by 
the bad ones with the dread of failure and ridicule. In reward 
for his adherence to the ministerial party, Lord North appointed 
him one of the Commissioners of Trade, so that this historian, 
like his illustrious contemporary Hume, occupied a place in the 
government of his country. 

It was in 1776 that appeared the first volume of his Histor)% 
and the book became instantly so popular that its success rather 
resembled that of some amusing work of fiction than of a grave 
and serious history. It was the talk and admiration of the day; 
the volume was found in the library of every reader, and in the 
dressing-room and boudoir of the fashionable and the fair. Gibbon 
was greeted with the warm and generous applauses of Hume, 
Robertson, and all the distinguished literary men of his day both 
in England and abroad; and when we reflect upon the brilliancy 
and originality of the work itself, we can easily account for the 
delight with which it was received : even its faults were of a na- 
ture to impress and to attract. The period which forms the subject 
of the work was one which, though fertile in splendid, impres- 



CHAP. XV.] GIBBON : ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANITY. 287 

sive, and pathetic events, had never been studied or investigated 
by a genius sufficiently patient and enlightened to disentangle the 
contradictions and complexities of the barbarous historians in 
whose works alone the materials were to be found. The ante- 
cedent and subsequent epochs had been repeatedly discussed ; 
but the long interval between the commencement of the decadence 
of Rome and the consummation of its ruin, had remained, like 
some desolate border-country, unvisited and unexplored ; it was 
a region of gloom and darkness — a twilight between the ancient 
and modern world. His genius was peculiarly calculated to give 
full effect to the grand but confused details of this astonishing 
picture, and his solemn, gorgeous, and rlietorical style was in 
happy harmony with the cliaracter of the times which he de- 
scribed. It would seem as if he had studied the writings of the 
Lower Empire till he had caught, perhaps involuntarily, some- 
thing of their Asiatic splendour — the " barbaric pearl and gold," 
which dazzles the imagination, though it does not gratify the taste ; 
and of which the writings of the Greek and Latin fathers give a 
striking example. 

We have said that Gibbon, like Hume, is one of the most dan- 
gerous enemies by whom the Christian faith was ever assailed — 
he was the more dangerous because he was insidious. The fol- 
lowing is the plan of his tactics. He does not formally deny the 
evidence upon which is based the structure of Christianity, but 
he indirectly includes that system in the same category with the 
mythologies of paganism. The rapid spread of Christianity he 
explains by merely secondary causes; and in relating the dis- 
graceful corruptions, persecutions, and superstitions which so soon 
supplanted the pure morality of the primitive Church, he leads 
the reader to consider these less as the results of human crime, 
folly, and ambition, than as the necessary consequences of the 
system itself. He either did not or would not distinguish between 
the parceqiie and quoique ; and represents what is in reality an 
abuse as an inevitable consequence. Byron well described 
him as 

" Snapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer, 
The lord of irony, that master-spell." 

Moreover, though perpetually warmed by the grand or touching 
incidents he relates into noble bursts of eloquence and enthusiasm, 
he has no admiration for the struggles of Christian fortitude and 
the triumphs of Christian virtue. The same energy and virtue 
which, appearing in a heathen or a Mahomedan, fill his heart 
with fervour, and his lofty periods with a swelling grandeur, 
leave him cold and impassible, or cavilling and contemptuous, 
when they are exhibited in the cause of Christianity. 



288 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XV. 

In Gibbon's character there is also a peculiarity which, whether 
innate and natural or acquired from Voltaire and similar writers 
of that period, renders his writings dangerous to the young: this 
is a peculiar filthiness of imagination, which seems to revel in 
objects and events of gross and sensual immorality. No sooner 
does he find occasion to relate a scandalous or obscene story (and 
the corruption of manners during the period which forms the sub- 
ject of his history gives him but too many opportunities to in- 
dulge in this vein) tlian he seems to delineate it with a peculiar 
gusto and minuteness which are in the higliest degree offensive. 
He does not hasten rapidly over such scenes, saying, with Dante, 

" Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa ! " 

but he seems to take a perverse pleasure in dwelling on degrading 
images. Voltaire has much of this, and never omits an opportu- 
nity to introduce ideas not only sensual, but often physically dis- 
gusting; but in Voltaire these images are coloured by wit and 
sarcastic drollery, and are in harmony with the satiric petulance 
of his ridicule. In Gibbon the majestic solemnity of style, and 
the grave earnestness of the tone, render these offences against 
good taste exceedingly prominent and shocking. 

In 1781 were published the second and third volumes, and the 
three last in 1787. Gibbon, who has with a justifiable pride 
given us the anecdote of the circumstances attending the origin of 
his great work, has left us an equally minute and not less interest- 
ing record of his feelings at its conclusion: — " It was on the day, 
or rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of 
eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a 
summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took 
several turns in a berceau or covered walk of acacias, which com- 
mands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. 
The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the 
moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I 
will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of 
my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame. But 
my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread 
over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave 
of an old and agreeable companion, and that, whatsoever might 
be the future fate of my history, the life of the historian must be 
short and precarious." 

From Lausanne Gibbon again returned to England for a short 

-I 
time, but he came back again to Switzerland, where he remained 

till shortly before his death. Finding the society of Lausanne 

distracted by parties consequent upon the outbreak of the French 

Revolution, and induced by the death of Lord Sheffield, his most 

intimate friend, to return to London, in order to console and 



CHAP. XV.] gibbon: his style — guizot's criticism. 289 

counsel the widow, he came back to his own country, and died. 
in London in 1794. 

With all its delects, Gibbon's ' Decline and Fall of the Roman 
Empire' is a noble monument of genius and industry. The style 
is extraordinarily elevated and ornate, and resembles rather the 
antithetical tone of the French literature of the eighteenth cen- 
tury than an idiomatic English work. Indeed, so completely was 
Gibbon's mind saturated with French sympathies, that there is a 
tradition that he for some time hesitated whether his great work 
should be written in French or English. His narration is very 
clear, animated, and picturesque ; he brings before the reader's 
eye the persons and events which he describes; and wherever 
his scepticism and prejudices do not interfere, he gives a lively, 
penetrating, and natural account of the characters and motives of 
men. But his moral susceptibility was not very delicate, and he 
frequently lavishes on the external splendour of great actions 
that enthusiasm which should be reserved for the simple dignity 
of moral grandeur. His sympathies were somewhat theatrical; 
and though the general current of his narrative is exceedingly 
clear, his gorgeousness and measured pomp of language become 
fatiguing and oppressive. So great is his dread, too, of repeating 
the same word or name in the same page or at short intervals, 
that his expedients of finding a synonym are frequently productive 
of confusion and uncertainty in the reader. We cannot better 
conclude our remarks than by quoting the excellent and elaborate 
judgment of Guizot: — " After a first rapid perusal, which allowed 
me to feel nothing but the interest of a narrative, always animated, 
and, notwithstanding its extent and the variety of objects whieh 
it makes to pass before the view, always perspicuous, I entered 
upon a minute examination of the details of which it was com- 
posed ; and the opinion which I then formed was, I confess, 
singularly severe. I discovered, in certain chapters, errors which 
appeared to me sufficiently important and numerous to make me 
believe that they had been written with extreme negligence ; in 
others, I was struck with a certain tinge of partiality and preju- 
dice, which imparted to the exposition of the facts that want of 
truth and justice which the English express by their happy term 
misrepresentation. Some imperfect quotations, some passages 
omitted unintentionally or designedly, have cast a suspicion on 
the honesty of the author ; and his violation of the first law of 
history — increased to my eyes by the prolonged attention with 
which I occupied myself with every phrase, every note, every re- 
flection — caused me to form on the whole work a judgment far 
too rigorous. After having finished my labours, I allowed some 
time to elapse before I reviewed the whole. A second attentive 
and regular perusal of the entire work, of the notes of the author, 
25 



290 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVI. 

and of those which I had thought it right to subjoin, showed me 
how much I had exaggerated the importance of the reproaches 
which Gibbon really deserved: I was struck with the same errors, 
the same partiality on certain subjects; but I had been far from 
doing adequate justice to the immensity of his researches, the 
variety of his knowledge, and, above all, to that truly pliilosophi- 
cal discrimination which judges the past as it would judge the 
present; which does not permit itself to be blinded by the clouds 
which time gathers around the dead, and which prevent us from 
seeing that, under the toga as under the modern dress, in the 
senate as in our councils, men were what they still are, and that 
events took place eighteen centuries ago as they take place in our 
own days. I then felt that his book, in spite of the faults, will 
always be a noble work; and that we may correct his errors and 
combat his prejudices without ceasing to admit that few men have 
combined, if we are not to say in so high a degree, at least in a 
manner so complete and so well regulated, the necessary qualifi- 
cations for a writer of history." 



CHAPTER XVI. 



THE TRANSITION SCHOOL. 



Landscape and Familiar Poetry — James Thomson — The Seasons — Episodes — 
Castle of Indolence — Minor Works — Lyric Poetry — Thomas Gray — The Bard, 
and the Elegy — Collins and Shenstone — The Schoolmistress — Ossian — Chat* 
terton and the Rowley Poems — William Cowper — George Crabbe — The Low- 
land Scots Dialect and Literature — Robert Burns. 

" The less man really knows," says an eloquent and acute 
Eussian writer, "the greater his contempt for the ordinary, for 
what surrounds him. A practical every-day truth appears to him 
a degradation ; what we see before our eyes and often, we repre- 
sent to ourselves as undeserving of attention ; we want the far, the 
remote ; il n''yapas de grand homme pour son valet-de-chambre." 
What is true of philosophy in general is applicable to art in parti- 
cular, and to literature, the highest, completes! and most perfect 
of the arts. What is the distinction between the tone of literature 
of the eighteenth and that of the nineteenth century? What but 
the substitution of the real and the actual for the abstract and the 
remote ? It is true that the real and the actual are idealised, are 
glorified, in passing into the golden atmosphere of art, no less 
than were the abstract and the remote, and this is an indispensable 



CHAP. XVI.] THOMSON: THE SEASONS. 291 

condition, for the ideal is the very soul of poetry: but we now 
find in pictures of ordinary life, in the description of common na- 
ture, a source of profound pleasure, emotion and improvement. 
"What Coleridge has said of old Paganism may with more justice 
be applied to the literature of modern times: — 

" Clothing the palpable and familiar 
With golden exhalations of the dawn." 

The full and complete daylight of this new era is to be found 
in Scott, in Byron, in Shelley, in Wordsworth; but the dawning 
of the auspicious Aurora was gradual and slow. It was first seen 
to glimmer (we mean in modern days, for of recent periods only 
do we speak) in the poetry of Thomson, and then gradually 
glowed witli a stronger light, powerfully hastened in its develop- 
ment by the publication of Percy's 'Reliques of Ancient English 
Poetry,' by the forgeries of Macpherson, and by the fabrications of 
Chatterton. Its characteristic was an intense and reverent study 
of Nature in all her manifestations, whether of physical or intel- 
lectual activity : of the one Thomson is the type — of the other, 
Cowper and Crabbe. 

The early part of Thomson's career somewhat resembles that 
of Smollett. He was born in Scotland in 1700, and came up to 
London to push his fortune as a literary man. He carried with 
him the unfinished poem of ' Winter,' some passages of which 
he Ind shown to Mallet, by whom he had been strongly advised 
to publish the work. Arriving in London at the age of eighteen, 
he obtained the situation of tutor in the family of Lord Binning, 
which he afterwards exchanged for the more powerful protection 
of Lord Cliancellor Talbot. With the son of this distinguished 
lawyer Thomson had the advantage of travelling over the Con- 
tinent, and thus feeding his rich imagination with the fairest scenes 
of natural magnificence, and filling his ardent fancy with recollec- 
tions of the great and wise of ancient history. The poem of 
'Winter' was published in 172G, and in the two succeeding 
years it was followed by its beautiful companions, 'Summer' and 
'Spring,' 'Autumn' not appearing until 1730. The four works 
together compose a complete cycle of the various appearances of 
Nature during an English year, and are known to all who feel 
what is beautiful, as the 'Seasons' — the finest descriptive poem 
in the English or perhaps in any language. There is no country 
wliose climate atfords so great a variety and richness of external 
beauty as that of Great Britain ; none in which the surface of the 
land is more picturesquely broken into every form and tint of 
beauty, none more abundant in spots sanctified by memory, none 
wliere the changes of climate are more capricious and imposing. 
The finest art and the most idiomatic literature of England bear 



292 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVI. 

testimony to the intensity of feeling for the external loveliness of 
nature which seems to form a distinctive feature of the national 
character — a trait more marked perhaps among us than even 
among the ancient Greeks. In that great and peculiar style, in- 
vented and principally cultivated in England — descriptive or land- 
scape poetry — Thomson is by far our greatest artist; though -this 
tendency to study and portray nature for herself is singularly 
perceptible in all tlie greatest works of purely English genius. 
With what a lond enthusiasm has Father Chaucer, whose verses 
are modulated to the forest-music of an English landscape, the 
gurgle of the brook, the multitudinous rustle of leaves, and, above 
all, to the liquid melody of birds — with what an earnest joy has 
this divine poet seized every occasion of painting the physiog- 
nomy of English scenery ! Spenser's fairy glades are full of 
this deep passion for nature as nature — Nature looked at for 
herself: neither Shakspeare nor Milton has ever written any 
twenty consecutive lines without giving us, often in a single word, 
and parenthetically, as it were, some touch of natural scenery, 
some embodiment of physical object familiar as the cloud or the 
leaf, ever-varying like them, yet, like them, invariable. 

In the 'Seasons' of Thomson we have a subject unbounded 
in variety, yet happily limited in extent; and it is no exaggeration 
to affirm that there is not a possible modification of English 
scenery, terrestrial or atmospheric, which he has not caught and 
fixed for ever. Everything appears in its natural light, in its 
relative perspective and proportion; and though we are of course 
carried in succession through the various appearances of the year, 
he always has the art to conceal the joinings in his canvas, and 
to give us the feeling of continuity which produces the charm of 
a well-executed panorama. Above all, the work is animated 
throughout with so gentle yet so genial a glow of philanthropy 
and religious gratitude, that its parts are, so to say, fused naturally 
together; the everchanging landscape is harmonised by this calm 
and elevated, and tender spirit, which throws over the whole a 
soft and all-pervading glow, like the tint of an Italian heaven. 

The language and versification, however, are not always worthy 
of the sul)ject nor of the sentiment of the work. Though very 
much purified and simplified in his later works, there is often an 
ambitious tumidity in Thomson's diction not unaccompanied by 
vulgar and mean expressions; and though in a thousand places 
he has exhibiled a peculiar felicity in finding those appropriate 
Avords which paint almost to the eye 

" What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed," 

he is occasionally deficient in simplicity and chasteness. 

His blank verse is sonorous and musical, but he did not possess 



CHAP. XVI."] THOMSON : THE SEASONS TRAGEDIES, ETC. 293 

that fineness of ear which seems involuntarily to echo the wild 
and everchanging voices of nature ; nor had lie the art of conceal- 
ing, by an inexhaustible flexibility and sensibility of rhythm, the 
tendency to monotony which is the prevailing defect of descrip- 
tive poetry. 

To relieve the uniformity of his plan he has introduced a great 
number of little tales or episodes, generally suggested by the scene 
which he is describing. Of these the pathetic pictures are un- 
doubtedly the best; as, for example, the episode of the shepherd 
perishing in the snow, introduced into the ' Winter ;' and generally 
where a mixture of the pathetic with the terrible is the emotion to 
be excited ; but when he attempts to be simply graceful, tender, 
or facetious, his failure is painful and inevitable. Thomson's 
imagination was intensely sensuous ; his delineations of love are 
very far from romantic ; and when he endeavours to idealise the 
passion, he becomes pitiably stilted, aff'ected, and vulgarly fine ; 
as, for instance, in the bathing scene of Musidora, and little less, 
though certainly less offensively so, in the so-often-quoted tale of 
Lavinia. 

His comic scenes (as the fox-hunting debauch) are utterly gross, 
and totally discordant with the tone of the rest of the work. That 
he was not destitute of a rich and even refined humour, we shall 
see when we come to speak of the exquisite ' Castle of Indolence.' 
' The Seasons' must be undoubtedly considered, all proper de- 
ductions made, a truly great and beautiful work. If the poet has 
sometimes fallen into the afl'ectation of classicism, and drawn from 
the ancients instead of from nature; if with the majestic accents 
of his hymn to the Creator — best praised by the glory of his 
Avorks — he has allowed to mingle some accents of earthly adula- 
tion ; if he be sometimes tedious, or solemn out of season ; if his 
ornaments be sometimes meretricious, and his language sometimes 
too heavy for the thought — all this, and much more, we can par- 
don him, for he has interpreted the book of Nature with a pene- 
trating yet reverent eye ; he has made us feel the loveliness of a 
thousand objects which escape us from their very familiarness ; 
and he has given to his country the glory of originating a new, 
elevating, and beautiful species of writing, of which the antique 
literature ofl^'ers no example. 

The success of ' The Seasons' was so great as to enable Thom- 
son (with the assistance of a government sinecure given him by 
Talbot) to purchase a cottage on the banks of the Thames near 
Richmond, and pass the rest of his days in comfort and even lux- 
ury. During the whole of his career he continued a pretty in- 
dustrious writer, and composed several tragedies in the false and 
unhealthy taste of that day, which were neither very successful 
at that time nor deserving of any notice since. They are all 

25* 



294 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. EcHAP. XVI. 

remarkable for mannerism, sham grandeur, and sham pathos, and 
no less for a declamatory and noisy emphasis of patriotism. He 
also composed an eulogistic poem in honour of Newton, which 
contains one or two fine passages, and a species of lyric entitled 
'Liberty,' which deserved the failure it met with, though its sub- 
ject, as he ought to have foreseen, was too impracticable for any 
other result to be possible. ; 

In his suburban retirement he appears to have lived much more 
happily than often fails to the lot of poets, and to have been able 
to indulge not only in that pardonable and innocent luxury which 
was congenial to his temper, but also in those <icts of benevolence 
and goodness that won him the love and respect of his contempo- 
raries. So intensely indolent, indeed, was he, that he is said 
to have been in the habit, when lounging in his dressing-gown 
along the sunny walks of his garden, of biting a mouthful out of 
the peaches ripening on his wall, too lazy to lift his hand to pluck 
them. So self-indulgent a poet was fitted to be the high-priest of 
Indolence, and he has in one exquisite composition immortalized 
the very ideal of his failing. This is ' The Castle of Indolence,' 
an allegorical poem in the style and manner of Spenser, which 
not only is the best imitation ever made of the great author of 
' The Faerie Queen,' but one of the most delightful works in the 
English language. Spenser was, to a certain degree, an imitator 
of Ariosto, and the southern temperament of Thomson enabled him 
to reproduce, even more fiiilhfully than his immediate model, the 
luxuriant graces of the ' Orlando;' for ' The Castle of Indolence' 
is, like Ariosto, more tinged with gaiety than the poem of Spenser. 
In this work the author of ' The Seasons' exhibits a richness of 
harmony which could hardly have been expected from him, judg- 
ing by his former poems, and the soft profusion of his lulling and 
luxurious fancy is most inimitably expressed in the languishing 
measures of the verse. 

The allegorical part, particularly the birth and education of the 
knight Industry, who liberates the unfortunate captives from the 
enchanted castle, is not either very striking or well imagined : it 
is Spenserian, it is true, but not quite Spenser's finest vein. In 
this individualizing magic Spenser himself does not always suc- 
ceed ; he deliglits and impresses us, not with the realising and 
embodiment of intellectual conceptions, but by the wonderful va- 
riety and vividness of his personages, which, though bearing the 
names of virtues and vices, do not please us by what they pre- 
tend to be, but by what they are, i. e. men and women, masked 
and costumed to act in a splendid pageant. We are pleased with 
them, not as dramatic characters, but as actors. But the charm 
of 'The Castle of Indolence' lies in the descriptions, in the inex- 
haustible yet gentle flow of lulling images of calmness and repose. 



CHAP. XVI.] GRAY. 295 

This luxurious dreaminess we sometimes feel in reading Spenser, 
but it forms the very colouring and key-note of Thomson's poem: 
let liim express it in his own delicious words : — 

"A pleasing land of drowsy hend it was, 
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye, 
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, 
For ever flushing round a summer sky ; 
There eke tlie solt delights, that witchingly 
Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast, 
And the calm pleasures, always hover'd nigh; 
And whate'eT smacked of noyaiice or unrest 
AVas far, far off expeli'd from that delicious nest." 

This excellent man and great poet died of a cold caught on the 
Thames, August 27, 1718. 

Lyric poetry is perhaps the only important subdivision of lite- 
rature in which the earlier period of the history of English genius 
had failed to offer models of supereminent excellence. Cowley, 
indeed, had made noble essays to reproduce in the literature of his 
country something analogous in spirit and structure to the lyric 
compositions of Greece ; but in imitating Pindar and Anacreon he 
seems to have forgot the intense mythological fervour which glows 
throughout these works, which are among the grandest manifesta- 
tions of Hellenic art. 

Italian poetry, too, was abundant in noble lyrics: Petrarch had 
shewn the power and majesty of liis country's language, and a 
multitude of great men, Chiabura, Pindemonte, Filicaja, had given 
proof that the peculiar energies of the Greek language might be 
revived, with little diminution of effect, and a not dissimilar form 
of expression, in the splendid canzoni of Italy. These works 
Milton had profoundly studied, and it was from their study, too, 
combined with an intense perception of the beauties of the Greek 
lyrics whose spirit they so admirably resuscitated, that Gray was 
able, in the Ode, to dispute the wreath with Milton himself, and 
to give noble specimens of this kind of writing. Gray, like Mil- 
ton, was one of the most learned men of his age, and he also had 
the good taste to avoid, in the subject and imagery of his works, 
that feeble affectation of exclusive classicism which gives so mo- 
notonous and unnatural an air to most of the Ij'ric compositions of 
his day : and tlius his very boldness in rejecting all the over-worn 
macliinery of Greek and Roman mythology actually tended to 
give his works a greater real and essential resemblance to the spirit 
of classical poetry. The artifices of his language and the peculiar 
structure of his verse are reproductions of ancient poetry, particu- 
larly of Greece; but the main source of the pleasure he gives is 
in the truly national sympathies he excites, a merit strongly ex- 
emplified in two of his noblest compositions, the ' Ode on Eton 
College' and the ' Elegy in a Country Churchyard.' These are 



29G OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVI. 

Avorks which any Greek poet — even the greatest — might have 
been proud to own ; they are saturated willi the finest essence of 
the Attic Muse. Yet Gray has in no sense Hellenised too much 
or out of place : he is Greek by the very force of daring to be 
English. 

Gray was born in 1716, and began his career by travelling over 
part of Europe with Horace Walpole. Returning to England in 
1741, he wisely adopted an academic life, for which he was best 
fitted by his character and pursuits. He retired to Cambridge, 
where he continued to reside, with few interruptions, until his 
death in 1771, devoting himself to incessant but somewhat de- 
sultory study, and keeping up with several literary friends a cor- 
respondence which gives us a most amusing and lively portrait of 
a singular character. In his manners and feelings Gray was ex- 
tremely timid and fastidious, aflecting to despise the pursuits and 
habits of the academic society by which he was surrounded, and 
perpetually conceiving great literary plans which his indolence 
and self-indulgent Sybaritism prevented him from realising. 

His works appeared at considerable intervals — the 'Ode on 
Eton College' in 1747, the 'Elegy' four years after, the noble 
'Ode on the Progress of Poetry' in 1757, and 'The Bard' (his 
greatest work) after the lapse of another period as considerable. 
In the ' Ode to Eton College' he gives melodious expression to 
that natural and tender feeling of regret with which in after-life 
we regard the sports of childhood and the scenes of our school- 
days. It is weighty and rich with thought, and many passages 
are versified with inimitable delicacy and skill ; we see here some 
of those bold personifications and sparkling felicities of diction — 
those " thoughts that breathe, and words that burn" — which give 
such splendour to his after lyrics. 

The subject and general treatment of the ' Elegy' are familiar to 
readers of every nation. The reflections of this poem are cer- 
tainly not marked by any striking originality, but they are illus- 
trated with such consummate taste, expressed with such a union 
of impressiveness and grace, that the work is a masterpiece of 
poetical handling. 

The production by which the genius of this poet will be tried 
is undoubtedly the lyric entitled ' The Bard.' It is suggested by 
the legend of King Edward I. having given orders that all the 
bards should be put to death, as to them he attributed the despe- 
rate resistance made by the Welsh people to his victorious arms. 
The poem opens with a splendid and spirited description of one 
of these national poets beholding, from a rock, the approach of 
the invader's army — 

•' As down the steep of Snowdon's shagg-y side, 
He wound with toilsome march his long array ;" 



CHAP. XVI.3 COLLINS AND SHENSTONE. 297 

and the substance of the work is an awful prophetic denunciation 
of the woe and ruin which were to avenge on the cruel conqueror 
and his house the miseries he had inflicted on Wales. The pic- 
ture is a noble and striking one, and possesses much more dis- 
tinctness than is generally to be found in Gray. In this he has 
exhausted all the stores of imagery and all the artifices of har- 
mony ; and the effect is singularly grand and imposing. But the 
poem, in spite of all his skill, has somewhat of an artificial and hot- 
bed air; the imagery, beautiful as it is, inspires the reader with an 
involuntary feeling of its having been painfully collected from a 
multitude of sources. It is a piece of rich mosaic ; and though 
the parts of which it is composed are exquisite in themselves and 
dovetailed together with no ordinary art, the efTect of the whole is 
rather of construction than evolution. Gray's personifications, 
Avliether of single figures or groups of abstract qualities, are often 
designed with singular felicity and adorned with a gorgeous splen- 
dour of colouring; but they are sometimes out of place, as for 
example, in ' The Bard,' that beautiful picture : — 

" Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows, 
While proudly riding o'er the azure realm, 
In g:il!ant trim the gilded vessel goes, 

Youth at the prow, and Pleasure at the helm, 
Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway, 
That, hush'd in grim repose, expects his evening prey." 

The Welsh poetry is indeed full of the boldest personification — 
as indeed is that of every rude and warlike people ; but the real 
fragments of the bardic compositions rather give life to inanimate 
objects than represent under a sensible form the abstract concep- 
tions of the mind. 

In ' The Descent of Odin' and some other pieces Gray en- 
deavoured to reproduce in English poetry the wild and savage 
character of the Runic imagination ; but the spirit is not very hap- 
pily preserved, and there is visible in these (as for example in 
the celebrated ode entitled ' The Fatal Sisters') a perpetual and 
not very successful struggle after effect. 

Lyric poetry was a department of the art in which this period 
of English literary history was exceedingly prolific. The two 
most popular if not most important names which we have to 
notice are Collins and Shenslone: the one is held by many, and 
with no small justice, the equal of Gray; and the other may 
almost be called the inventor of a peculiar style of pastoral ballad 
writing. The story of both is painful and melancholy : Collins 
was driven by disappointment into intemperance, and by intem- 
perance into madness; and Shenstone, by the imprudent indulg- 
ence in his taste for an elegant art (the art of ornamental gar- 
dening, of which he must be considered as almost tlie inventor), 



298 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVI. 

into inextricable embarrassment. If we admire the genius and 
skill which have compressed into the few pages of Gray's collected 
poems so many noble images, so many exquisite movements of 
harmony, and so much splendour and propriety of diction, we 
shall find that an intense susceptibility for beauty has concentrated 
into the yet smaller compass of CoUins's productions a quantity 
and depth of loveliness of a kind even more permanently attract- 
ive to the reader. If Gray was the more accomplished artist, 
Collins was the more born poet. In Collins the first thing we 
remark is the inimitable felicity of his expression. Gray's love- 
ly and majestic pictures are careful, genial, artistic paintings of 
nature; those of Collins are the images of nature in the camera 
ohscura. Gray is the light of day ; Collins is the Italian moon- 
light — as bright almost, but tenderer, more pensive, more spi- 
ritual, — 

" Dusk, yet clear ; 
Mellovv'd and mingling, yet distinctly seen." 

The 'Ode on the Passions' is exquisitely felicitous in concep- 
tion, full of personifications conceived in a true lyric spirit : the 
changes, too, of imitative harmony with which the poet at once 
describes and exemplifies the appropriate music of each passion 
— all these form a noble eff'ort of taste, sensibility, and genius, 
and may be boldly compared to the somewhat similar picture in 
the immortal 'Ode' of Dryden ; but we must confess that in our 
judgment some of the minor lyrics of Collins exhibit not only a 
rarer and more exquisite degree of merit, but are a more faithful 
impress of the peculiar idiosyncrasy of his mind. The little ' Ode 
to Evening' consists of but tbirteen short quatrains, U'ithout 
rhyme ; but in its fifty-two lines we have the whole spirit and 
quintessence of its subject: it is an orient pearl of tender love- 
liness. All is soft, airy, full of variety, yet harmonized into 
grace : it is one of those undulating melodies of Schubert, on 
which the soul floats dreamily, as if on the dewy breath of twi- 
light. 

Several of Collins's songs (as for example the beautiful Dirge 
in ' Cymbcline,' the stanzas ' How sleep the brave,' the ' Elegy 
on Thomson,' <^c.) possess similar but inferior merit, and are 
not only fuller of the poet's peculiar charm, but more likely to 
defy future rivalry, than the more elaborate works, such as tbe 
'Ode on the Higliland Superstitions,' that to ' Liberty,' or the 
' Oriental Eclogues :' these last, though beautiful, and though ad- 
mired when they appeared as being one of the fii'st attempts to 
employ in English poetry Eastern imagery, yet have been much 
surpassed by more recent writers, better acquainted with the real 
manners and nature of the " Morning-Land." 



CHAP. XVI.] SHENSTONE : THE SCHOOLMISTRESS. 299 

The 'Pastorals' of Shenstone were singularly popular in their 
day, and are still admired by the young. Whatever charm they 
possess is owing to their smooth and easy language, their simple 
equable fluency, and also to the true but slender vein of natural 
sentiment, which makes us forget their intolerable mawkishness 
and the absurd affectation of the persons and manners of their 
shepherds and shepherdesses. 

Shenstone affirmed that the vicissitudes of hope, despair, jea- 
lousy, and sorrow, painted with a faithful though feeble pencil in 
these emasculated compositions, were records of a real passion : 
and those who tliink, with us, that a single touch of nature will 
give value to the weakest execution, will look with no implacable 
severity even upon the wearisome fadeurs of this " Bucolical 
Juvenal." 

But in spite of the false innocence and querulous monotony of 
these Pastorals, Shenstone has in one exquisite and original little 
poem shown that when he had the courage to trust to reality and 
nature he could produce what was excellent, nay, inimitable in its 
kind. We have spoken of Thomson's delightful imitation of 
Spenser in ' The Castle of Indolence ;' Shenstone's ' Schoolmis- 
tress' is a somewhat similar imitation of the language and versifi- 
cation of the English Ariosto, though with considerable differences 
of treatment. 

Shenstone has taken for his theme the humble character of a 
village schoolmistress, and the poem (which is very short) is an 
exquisite specimen of that kind of burlesque which is ludicrous 
without ceasing to be reverential. Of course there is little or no 
allegory ; and so far this work neither enters into any dangerous 
rivalry with Thomson, nor provokes any recollection but an 
agreeable one of Spenser; and the quaintness of the antiquated 
diction is in delightful unison with the pleasant rustic details, re- 
lated with enchanting ease and simple homely tenderness. 

But perhaps the most remarkable indication of the tendency 
(obscure at first and uncertain, but rapidly acquiring a definite 
direction) towards a new and distinct tone of romanticism, is to 
be observed in the two remarkable forgeries which had so pow- 
erful an effect on literature, not only in England but on the Con- 
tinent — the fabrications of Macpherson, and the Rowley poems 
of Chatterton. Of these the former had an infinitely wider popu- 
larity, particularly abroad ; and it is not too much to say that they 
gave a strong and peculiar colouring to poetry, which was even 
more durable in France and Germany than in England. The 
works which formed the favourite and almost only poetical read- 
ing of Napoleon, and which Madame de Stael assigned as a proof 
of that wild and pensive melancholy which foreigners considered 
as characteristic of the English mind, must certainly deserve our 



300 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVI. 

notice. The history of this strange imposition is as follows: — 
James Macpliersoii, a vain and needy Scotsman, published, about 
1760, a small volume of fragments, purporting to be prose trans- 
lations of ancient legendary poems still current in the highlands 
of Scotland, and relating, in the Erse or Gaelic dialect of the 
Celtic language, the exploits of heroes. These Macpherson pre- 
tended to have merely put into English, adopting for the purpose 
a peculiar abrupt and declamatory but modulated prose, full of 
bold metaphor and apostro])he, which was itself a new and strik- 
ing innovation in poetry, and tended to increase the air of authen- 
ticity. The success of this volume was immense ; and having 
obtained a subscription to enable him to travel through the wild 
and solitary mountain districts of his country, Macpherson soon 
produced a fresh supply of similar remains, among which were 
several regular heroic narratives of considerable length. The 
discovery of such a treasury of new and impressive forms of 
poetry in a savage region, the singular and complete delineations 
of a very chivalrous tone of manners and sentiment existing at a 
very remote age, the recurrence of names and events which still 
lived in the popular legends of the Celtic tribes — all these gave 
rise to a violent controversy respecting the authenticity of the 
poems. This controversy Macpherson could have immediately 
settled by the production of the Gaelic originals, but this he re- 
fused or was unable to do ; and after long and furious discussions, 
in which the national vanity of the Highlanders was irritated by 
the contemptuous incredulity of southern literary men, the High- 
land Society made minute and extensive investigations (by ad- 
dressing a circular letter of questions to the Gaelic pastors of the 
mountain country) to set at rest a question which had almost be- 
come a matter of national importance. From the evidence thus 
collected, it appeared, first, that a great many of the names and 
events which figure in the Ossianic poems were familiar to the 
legendary recollections of the Highlanders, and even of the Welsh 
and Irish Celts ; secondly, that, though some of the imagery em- 
ployed by Macpherson was really to be found in ancient Gaelic 
poems, yet that nothing like those compositions, or any one of 
them in particular, was to be found existing in the Celtic language 
in an independent, complete, and substantive form. A critical 
examination further showed that such a raised, artificial, and the- 
atrical tone of sentiment could never have existed among such a 
people and at such an epoch as Scotland in the fourth and fifth 
centuries ; and a still more minute inspection established the fatal 
fact that Macpherson was one of the boldest, most reckless, un- 
blushing plagiarists whoever existed. Homer, Virgil, the Hebrew 
Scriptures, even later poets of his own country, as Milton and 
Shakspeare — all had been ransacked to furnish forth images for 



CHAP. XVI.] OSSIAN — CHATTERTON. 301 

this Celtic paradise. Wordsworih has well observed that the 
conceptions of really ancient poetry are invariably simple, direct, 
distinct. Nature appears to the yet unidealising eye of primitive 
genius, as she does to the physical eye, well defined and vivid : 
but in Ossian all is vague, misty, pliantomlike. In the early ages 
of poetry, as in human infancy, the imagination corporealizes the 
remote : it is the last refinement of the ideal to spiritualise llie 
near. 

The perpetual recurrence of the same images in Ossian, the 
grass waving in the blast, the mist rolling around the grey rock, 
the lonely tomb of the warrior, the heath, the voiceful torrent, and 
the dim watery phantom floating over the moonlit desert — these 
undoubtedly give a certain impressive wildness, and breathe over 
the reader's mind a feeling of vague sadness, vastness, and deso- 
late grandeur; but the charm is soon broken, and, after looking 
for a short time upon the cloudy exaggeration of Ossian as the 
very top and consummation of the sublime, we return with re- 
newed ardour to the true, simple, unaffected splendour of real 
poetry. 

The experiments made by Chatterton upon public credulity, 
conceived with such boldness, executed with such genius, and 
persevered in with such haughty stoicism of pride, present one of 
the most singular phenomena in the history of the human intel- 
lect. Of all men, 

"Chatterton, the marvellous boy. 
The sleepless soul, that perish'd in his pride," 

appears to have been the most precocious ; and the whole of his 

short but melancholy tale is a dread proof of the danger of a 

too early development of intellect. He was born a man, his 

mind burst at once into full flower, and, like some plant made 

prematurely to bloom, it faded and " withered with all its blushing 

honours thick upon it." No eulogy can be more wonder-exciting 

than the simple recapitulation of his history. He was the sou 

of a sexton and parish schoolmaster, and was born at Bristol 

in 1752. Left an orphan by the death of his father, he passed his 

infancy in the deepest poverty, and received no other education 

than that of a charity-school. And yet this child, one of die 

humblest natives of a provincial town, wrote, at eleven years of 

age, verses which are not only equal to the early productions of 

, any of the extraordinary poets that ever lived, but will more than 

I bear a comparison with the average compositions of his day. 

With a mind strongly impressed with the peculiar character of 

, the Gothic architecture, of which Bristol affords some noble ex- 

1 amples, and exhibiting a peculiar susceptibility to the impressions 

of Middle-Age art, this miraculous child conceived the gigantic 

26 



302 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVI. 

idea of forging, not some detached records of antiquity, but a 
whole literature — of creating a style, a language, an author, a 
society of the fifteenth century. In this colossal project he suc- 
ceeded so far as to deceive almost all the literary men of his own 
day, and to extort from afiertimes a wondering admiration, which 
has been almost driven to deny irrefragable philological proof, 
rather than to grant the possibility of such poems being the for- 
gery of the uneducated son of a Bristol gravedigger. 

At the age of fourteen Chatterton was apprenticed to an attor- 
ney: and this occupation, however insupportable it may have 
been to so haughty and sensitive a character, undoubtedly fur- 
nished him with new means for the accomplishment of his future 
experiments on credulity, by making him acquainted with the 
barbarous liatin and Norman French — the relics of feudal and 
mediaeval phraseology — which abound in the language of Eng- 
lish jurisprudence. His first attempt was suggested by the com- 
pletion of a new bridge over the Avon, when he sent to a nevvs- 
jiaper a minute account of the ceremonies that had solemnised the 
opening of the old bridge, which he pretended to have copied 
from an ancient manuscript discovered by himself, containing a 
rich and gorgeous account of civic and chivalric processions, 
tournaments, miracle-plays, and solemn church ceremonies, with 
a sermon or benediction pronounced on the new structure by a 
saint of whom nobody had ever heard ! Nor were these won- 
derful impositions devoted only to gratify the municipal vanity 
of the public of his native city; his inexhaustible invention found 
relics of antiquity adapted to the tastes and failings of his friends 
and acquaintance: to Mr, Burgum, a pewlerer of Bristol, who 
was fond of heraldry, Chatterton gives a pedigree deducing the 
descent of the honest tradesman from the days of William Duke 
of Normandy, and making him the representative, in a direct 
line, of " Od, Duke of Blois and Earl of Holderness." To a 
pious divine the youth presents a fragment of a sermon on the 
Divinity of the Holy Spirit, pretended to have been preached in 
the fifteenth century ; and another person, enthusiastic for the 
architectural antiquities of the city, is gratified with a minute ac- 
count of all the churches, the castle, &c., accompanied by draw- 
ings of the principal objects, as made by the " gode preeste 
Thomas Rowleie." These, and a thousand more parchments on 
the most multifarious subjects, Chatterton pretended to have dis- 
covered in an old chest which had been deposited in the treasury 
or muniment-room of St. Mary RedclifF, at Bristol, of which 
church Chatterton's father had been sexton. It was customary 
in the Middle Ages to secure deeds and other important docu- 
ments by placing them under the protection of consecrated walls. 
In this church there had been preserved a number of these chests, 



CHAP. XVI.] CHATTERTON. 303 

and among them one called " Canyng's coffre," containing the 
deeds, grants, &c., of one William Canyng, a great merchant of 
Bristol. " Canyng's coffre" had been broken open by order of 
the magistrates, and all the parchments considered of any import- 
ance (grants and specifications of land, houses, &c.) had been 
taken away. It was among the parchments wliich remained in 
the chest that Chalterton pretended to have discovered the extra- 
ordinary productions which he gave to the world ; and he invented 
a complete history to explain their nature and contents. He af- 
firmed that the " gode Willyam Canynge," a great and royal mer- 
chant of Bristol in the fifteenth century, who had been a great 
beautifier and benefactor of his native city, had employed the 
monk, Thomas Rowley, to travel about and collect curiosities for 
this mediaeval virtuoso. Rowley is represented as an artist, as an 
architect, as a herald, as a dramatist, as a divine. Among the 
fragments are a number of pastorals in dialogue; a portion of a 
tragedy on the subject of Ella, a Brislolian hero ; an admirable 
ballad entitled ' The Death of Sir Charles Bawdin;' a number of 
heraldic notices, plans and elevations of buildings ; accounts of 
painters and stainers of glass — in a word, a most vast and mis- 
cellaneous collection of documents, all of them wonderfully in- 
teresting, and all tending to redound to the glory of Bristol and 
the fame of the accomplished and munificent" Maistre Canynge." 
Examined, however, by the light of the more accurate knowledge 
of our days, these pretended relics of the fifteenth century are 
full of fatal and inevitable errors, inconsistencies, and parachro- 
nisms ; the heraldic devices, for example, are such as rebel against 
the most fundamental rules of the art; the architecture could 
never have existed in any age; the very artful employment of 
old words, from Chaucer and similar authors, proves that Chatler- 
ton did not always understand the old French which formed a 
chief element in his mosaic of obsolete diction (as, for example, 
he used the Chaucerian word " mormal" in the sense of a dish, 
whereas it is really a disease — mort-mal). These mistakes are 
of course fatal to the authenticity of the poems, and are only a 
proof of the enormous difficulty of forging an ancient composi- 
tion with any chance of permanent success ; but they cannot 
diminish our wonder and admiration for the boldness, the inven- 
tion, the ingenuity, and perseverance of Chatlerton. The diction 
and orthography lie adopted are such as never could have existed 
at any period of the English language ; and perhaps the chief and 
most fatal weakness of the poems is the facility, harmony, and 
variety of the versification. 

There can be no doubt of the admirable merit of the poems 
themselves ; they are lull of genius, and some of them are in the 
highest degree dignified and sublime ; but this beauty and sub- 



304 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVI. 

limity are certainly not of the fifteenth century ; so tliat whatever 
glory Chatterton loses as an antiquarian, he more than recovers 
as a poet. As a poet alone he would, if he had lived, have been 
the greatest of his age. 

After exciting intense interest in Bristol, and giving rise to a 
long controversy as to their authenticity, these poems were sub- 
mitted by Walpole to Gray and Mason, who at once decided them 
to be forgeries : but there still remained many who believed it 
impossible that an uneducated lad could have invented such an 
astonishing mass of fabrication. Full of the consciousness of 
intellect, glowing with the " indomitable pride" of a haughty, 
sensitive, passionate, and meditative mind, this unhappy child of 
genius came to London, with the intention of living by his pen. 
On, on he struggled, in the midst of the most dreadful poverty, 
■writing political lampoons and contributing to the newspapers and 
reviews. His life was laborious, almost stoically self-denying ; ' 
at one time his proud and ardent spirit was revelling in the hope 
of fame and near success ; and when he sent to the mother and 
sister he so tenderly loved the largest share of his miserable 
gains, he would prophesy them wealth, honour, power, and repu- 
tation ; but soon his spirit was plunged again into despondency 
and despair. It is truly dreadful to follow even in imagination 
llie struggles and the vicissitudes of such an existence — the ago- 
nies for mere life, for bread, the agonies of such a soul as Chat- 
tcrton's. They were not long. After gaining for a short time a 
precarious subsistence as a writer, and having gradually descended 
into the very abyss and depth of poverty, he tore up all his 
papers, shut himself in his miserable garret, and poisoned himself 
with arsenic, August 25th, 1770. When he destroyed himself 
he teas not quite eighteen ! On the day before his death he re- 
fused the offer of a dinner from his landlady; the fangs of famine 
must have been tearing at his very vitals with a burning anguish 
like that of the morrow's poison, and yet his more than Spartan 
pride revolted at the idea of alms. 

His compositions, during the latter part of his career, though 
A'igorous and spirited, are not only coarse and scurrilous, but 
manifestly inferior to the Rowley poems : like the wonderful 
mocking-bird of the western forests, his note of mimicry was 
sweeter than his natural song. 

The great poet or artist is not he who feels that the common 
topics of daily life, the universal interests of mankind, are too 
vulgar to form the groundwork of his creative energy, and who is 
ever thirsting after the vast, the distant, and the extraordinary. 
His creations are not like the far and brilliant stars of heaven, but 
like the daisies at our feet, rooted in the common earth of our 
nature, and watered by the universal dews of human sympathy. 



CHAP. XVI.] COWPER. 305 

Of tlie truth of these remarks the literary character of William 
Cowper is a strong testimony : he is emphatically llie poet of 
ordinary and intimate life, of the domestic emotions, of household 
Jiappiness. His muse is a domestic deity, a familiar liar, and his 
countrymen have enshrined his verses in the very holiest pene- 
tralia of tlieir heartiis. Cowper was one of the first poets — even 
among the English — who ventured to describe those familiar 
thoughts, feelings, and enjoyments which are imagined by the 
word home — that word which echoes so deeply in the English 
heart, that word for which so many cultivated languages have 
neither synonym nor equivalent. The life of this great and truly 
original poet was singularly unhappy : the greater part of it was 
clouded with insanity, taking one of the most dreadful forms of 
that terrible disease — a form unhappily but too common in Eng- 
land, i. e. religious melancholy. Few things are more touching 
than the history of Cowper's life, as it is related, with more than 
feminine grace, innocence, and tenderness, in his own inimitable 
letters ; and we can understand the devotedness with which so 
many of his friends sacrificed their whole existence to cherish 
and console a being so gifted, so fascinating, and so unhappy. 
The dim shadow, too, of an early and enduring but hopeless love, 
throws over the picture a soft and pensive tint, like moonlight on 
some calm landscape. His first attack of insanity was brought 
on by a morbid timidity ; and though the disease must have been 
long latent in his system, it appears to have been carried to a 
crisis by the agitation which he felt at the idea of appearing be- 
fore the House of Lords to be examined touching his appointment 
to an office connected with that portion of our legislature. He 
■was reduced to such agonies of fear and despair, that, after an 
unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide, he was removed to a 
madhouse, where he remained a considerable time. When dis- 
charged from restraint, with his whole system shattered and trem- 
blingly irritable, he retired to Huntingdon, where he resided in 
the family of Mr. Unwin, a clergyman, whose friendship greatly 
contributed to his recovery and happiness. On Unwin's death, 
Cowper, with the Avidow of his deceased friend, changed his resi- 
dence to Olney, in Buckinghamshire, where he contracted a close 
intimacy with Mr. Newton, the rector of that parish. The seeds 
of the dreadful malady from which he had already suffered were 
of course not eradicated, and they w'ere unfortunately ripened 
gradually into a fatal growth by the fervours of fanatic enthusiasm. 
Newton was a man of powerful energies, and undoubtedly ani- 
mated by good intentions, but he was deeply tinged with that 
exaggerated and gloomy mysticism which is the reproach of the 
Calvinistic or Low-Church party. Accustomed to pay an undue 
attention to internal religious impressions, considering every sen- 

26* 



306 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP, XVI. 

sation as the immediate interposition of Divine influence, and 
consequently fostering that spirit of valetudinarianism which is 
even more fatal to the mind than to the body, a more unfortunate 
associate for a man in Cowper's sad condition could not be con- 
ceived : rest and cheerfulness was the only treatment proper for 
such a case. 

With the narrow inquisitorial spirit of his sect, Newton soon 
constituted himself the religious adviser — the confessor, in fact — 
of Cowper, and kept up in his timid, sensitive, impressionable 
heart, a morbid irritability which nothing but a mind naturally 
powerful could have resisted. 

It is singular enough that Cowper's poetical genius was not 
exhibited till an unusually advanced age : he was fifty before he 
obtained any reputation as a writer. During the early part of his 
residence at Olney, Cowper's existence had been that of a religious 
recluse : either dreading the agitations of life, or feeling his heart 
and brain still sore from the recent lashes of disease, he occupied 
liimself with the most tranquil and innocent amusements, making 
birdcages, taming hares, and so on. He was again overwhelmed 
by a new and severe attack of his malady, and it was in recover- 
ing from this that he turned to literature as a pastime rather than 
a serious occupation. Previous to this moment he had written 
nothing except a collection of hymns, entirely unworthy of his 
great though as yet undeveloped powers : and it was at the sug- 
gestion of Lady Austen, one of the members of the little affec- 
tionate circle of devoted friends by which he was surrounded, that 
he roused himself to exertions which were to render his name 
immortal. This lady, a gay and accomplished person, seems to 
have possessed over Cowper an influence which would have been 
in the highest degree salutary; but Mrs. Unwin, who feared that 
tlie poet's affections might be transferred to a more attractive rival, 
seems to have forced upon him the alternative of renouncing either 
the friendship of Lady Austen or her own. In this dilemma, 
Cowper's obligations to Mrs. Unwin, of course, rendered it im- 
possible for him to hesitate, and he was deprived of the healthy 
intercourse which might have served to some extent as an antidote 
against the intoxicating poison of enthusiastic religion. It was 
Lady Austen who gave Cowper, as a subject for his verse, her 
sofa, which the poet afterwards expanded into the admirable 
'Task :' it was she who related to him the story of 'John Gilpin ;' 
and, in short, her society, had he been happily removed from the 
fatal influence of the Newtons and Unwins, might have restored 
Cowper to the world. 

In ' The Task,' the first poem by which he became generally 
popular, he starts from a mock-heroic introduction, in the manner 
of Ambrose Philips, giving a ludicrous account of the rise and 



CHAP. XVI.] COWPER: the task HOMER. 307 

origin of the sofa, and gradually and easily glides into exquisite 
descriptions of rural scenery, inimitable j)ictures of homeborn 
and domestic happiness, and reflections upon all that is most 
interesting and important in the moral, religious, and social life 
of man. What must have been the innate strength and nobility 
of Covvper's mind, which could rise superior (as he generally 
does) to the wretched superstitions of a narrow-minded and exclu- 
sive sect! His versification (for the most part he wrote in blank 
verse) was at first intentionally made rough and irregular, partly 
for the purpose of giving a colloquial air to his works, and partly 
from a false notion that the solemn truths he inculcated would 
only have been degraded by the ornaments of art : but this error 
was afterwards much corrected. His language is in the highest de- 
gree easy, familiar, and consequently impressive; there is no author 
who so completely talks to his reader — none whose works breathe 
so completely of the individuality and personal character of their 
writer. He abounds in descriptions of scenery ; and we hardly 
regret that he should have passed his life among the dull levels of 
the Ouse, when we think that the power of his genius has given 
an unfading grace and interest to landscapes in themselves neillier 
romantic nor sublime. It appears to us that he is greatly inferior 
to Thomson in comprehensiveness and rapidity of picturesque 
perception; but then his mode of expression is simpler, less 
ambitious, and in purer taste, and he surpasses not only the 
author of 'The Seasons,' but perhaps all poets, in the power of 
communicating interest to the familiar details of domestic life. 
His humour was very delicate and just, and his descriptions of 
the common absurdities of ordinary intercourse are masterly. 
When rising, as he often and gracefully does, into the loftier atmo- 
sphere of moral or religious thought, he exhibits a surprising 
ease and dignity; his mind was of that rare order which can rise 
without an effort and sink without meanness. He is uniformly 
earnest and sincere ; and though in many passages he has shown 
traces of the bigoted and exaggerated spirit of Calvinistic theolo- 
gy, that tendency to see judgments in the most ordinary accidents 
of life, and perhaps somewhat, too, of the indecorous mingling of 
religious impressions with the common concerns of daily exist- 
ence, it is only wonderful how he could have lived so long in the 
heated atmosphere of enthusiasm, without losing the candour, be- 
nevolence, and good sense of his character. 

After ' The Task,' Cowper produced a new translation of the 
* Iliad' of Homer. He was fully aware of the defects of Pope's 
version, and endeavoured to approach nearer to the majestic sim- 
plicity, the primeval grandeur, of the original ; and for this pur- 
pose he used blank verse as his medium. But Cowper has failed 
almost as signally as Pope had done before him: his version is 



308 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVI. 

indeed rather more faithful, but it is tedious and monotonous ; it 
has neither the might and ever-varying splendour of the original, 
nor the delicate artificial graces of Pope, who, if he could not imi- 
tate the peculiar and Scriptural sublimity of the Greek — 
" The large utterance of the early Gods" — 

at least made up for the want of that quality by elegance and sweet- 
ness peculiar to himself. Neither the recluse of Olney nor the 
skilful satirist of Twickenham has approached the rough energy, 
the truly Homeric fire, or even the resounding oceanic music of 
old Chapman. The translation of Homer was published by sub- 
scription, and was tolerably successful; and shortly after, the poet 
migrated with all his friends to Weston, a beautiful village near 
Olney. Here he again fell into a deep and increasing gloom of 
religious despondency, and the death of Mrs. Unwin, in 1796, 
was the last blow to the unhappy poet's sanity. He lingered on 
for three years in misery and despair, and died on the 25th of 
April, 1800. The last vqrses he ever wrote, ' The Castaway,' 
form a most melancholy record of his dreadful state of mind, and 
may be compared with the somewhat similar composition of 
Byron, written shortly before his death. Both breathe the very 
music of sorrow, but Cowper's is without hope, and Byron's sad- 
ness is dignified by resignation and manly fortitude. His finest 
and most popular poems are those which contain a mingling of 
serious reflection, description, and comic painting of character, in 
■which last he has a truly Addisonian grace and delicacy. Some 
of his minor and more familiar works, as the exquisite lines to 
Mary (Mrs. Unwin), the verses on his mother's picture, are per- 
haps unequalled in their particular manner. It is on these, on the 
* Table-Talk,' and on ' The Task,' that his reputation is based : it 
is a glory that will endure as long as our language. Cowper was 
born in 1731, and died at the age of sixty-nine. 

If Cowper be the poet who with a wise boldness has depicted 
the joys and woes of domestic and fireside life in rural England, 
painting what he saw and felt, not in the colours of meretricious 
ornament, but in the sober hues of truth, Crabbe must be consi- 
dered as essentially the poet of the poor — of the English poor. 
Cowper contented himself with turning the telescopic glances of 
poesy into the quiet retreats of virtuous, refined, and educated re- 
tirement, while Crabbe directed it into the squalid dens of plebeian 
misery, the workhouse, the gaol, and the smuggler's hut. It is 
very singular to observe that Cowper, the man of exquisite refine- 
ment and sensibility, of aristocratic birth and elegant tastes, should 
exhibit in his style and tone of thinking a frequent air of rugged- 
ness and asperity, while his great contemporary, born in the very 
depth of poverty, and nursed during his hard infancy amid the 



CHAP. XVI.] CRABBE : HIS AVORKS. 309 

very scones of want, of crime, and wretclicdness wliich he has so 
powerfully described, retained in all his works something of the 
elaborate finish and antithesis of style which Pope so long caused 
to prevail in English poetry. He has been aptly and wittily 
styled " Pope in worsted stockings." He was born in 1754, at 
the miserable coast-town of Aldborough, in Suffolk, and his ear- 
lier years were passed amid the squalor of extreme poverty, ren- 
dered still more oppressive by the gloomy and violent character 
of his father. Virgil had a deep meaning when he placed the 
fiend Want at the portals of the infernal shades where his hero 
was to gain insight into futurity; Crabbe's long wrestling with 
his fate no doubt gave him that profound knowledge of human 
nature which has filled his works with such solemn lessons of 
pathos and wisdom. The place of his nativity is situated in the 
ugliest and most monotonous scenery of a flat and swampy coast, 
and the inhabitants were in harmony with the nature which sur- 
rounded them — fishermen, poachers and smugglers, a savage and 
demoralised race. After receiving an education far superior to 
Avhat could have been expected, young Crabbe made an unsuc- 
cessful attempt to establish himself as a country apothecary, and, 
finding himself on the brink of ruin, he took the desperate reso- 
lution of journeying up to London, where he arrived without a 
friend, and with three pounds and some unfinished manuscripts 
in his pocket. After battling nobly and valiantly and hopefully 
with all the horrors of disappointment, and at the moment when 
his last hope seemed to have deserted him, he was lucky enough 
to attract the notice of Burke, one of the wisest, greatest, and most 
benevolent men who have ever done honour to our country. With 
his assistance he brought out his first successful poem, * The Li- 
brary.' This was the turn of the tide for Crabbe, and fortune 
soon began to shower upon him rewards for his patience and 
manly fortitude. He found patrons on every side, and entered 
the Church, performing his sacred functions for the first time in 
his native town of Aldborough. In 1783 appeared ' The Village,' 
a work which at once stamped him as a great original poet. The 
principal charm of this work was its masterly description of real 
nature and actual humble life, and it was mainly composed of 
studies or recollections of the men and scenes which had sur- 
rounded his infancy. Crabbe saw the fatal defect of all the pas- 
toral poetry which had hitherto appeared — its false decorum and 
feeble distrust of nature. His object was to show the poor 
'^ As truth will paint them, and as bards will «of." 

He trusted to nature, and received immortality as his reward. 
The singular apparent incapability of the society and scenery he 
took for his subject is only an additional proof that Crabbe's prin- 



310 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVI. 

ciple of art was correct. He is in poetry what Hogarth is in 
painting; and if both poet and painter have been accused, not 
without a show of justice, of dwelling too exclusively upon what 
is odious and repulsive in reality, and giving a too gloomy and 
discouraging view of human societj', this fault is more than re- 
deemed by the admirable instinct with which they have penetrated 
into the heart of man, and shown that its strength and weakness, 
its wisdom and its folly, its majesty and its degradation, are alike 
in all ranks and classes. Crabbe has read us deep and terrible 
lessons of human crime and folly, and his lessons are, like Ho- 
garth's, only rendered more impressive and homespeaking by the 
familiar language in which they are conveyed. His works are 
very numerous, and all very much alike in merit, in form, in con- 
duct, and in moral. He generall}^ selects some ground or frame- 
work offering him the opportunity for displaying his peculiar and 
admirable talent for minute description of commonplace, ordinary, 
and often even repulsive scenes and persons. On this ground he 
introduces a number of detached or episodic tales, generally of 
lowly and often of the humblest life — sometimes deeply tragic, 
sometimes full of a quaint and subdued humour. Each story is 
complete in itself, and depicts some striking episode of internal 
and domestic life; they are short but awful extracts from the 
unread pages of the great book of the human heart. The fol- 
lowing is a list of Crabbe's works : ' The Village ;' ' The Parish 
Register' (supposed to be an account of the most remarkable 
births, marriages, and deaths occurring during a year in a country 
parish); ' The Borough,' a minute and masterly delineation of 
some obscure country town like Aldborough, with inimitable por- 
traits and biographies of the most remarkable characters, from the 
highest to the lowest, which figure on such a stage; the 'Tales 
in Verse,' containing many of his finest specimens of pathos and 
character-painting; and, lastly, 'Tales of the Hall,' published 
after a very long interval, during which the poet seems to have 
remained indifTerent to the fame he had acquired. These consist 
principally of the narratives of two brothers, who meet in old age 
after a life's separation, and mutually communicate their history 
of early struggles and adventure. All these works are written in 
the rhymed couplet of Pope. Crabbe's humour is very dry and 
quaint, and is sometimes introduced somewhat out of place; but 
his powers of minute descriptive painting, and his skill in setting 
vividly before us a scene or a character which at first sight we 
should consider hopelessly unattractive, were never equalled in 
literature. Nor is he inferior when delineating either the grander 
or more familiar manifestations of external nature: the sea, in 
storm and calm, has perhaps never been so admirably represented 
in poetry ; and in the depicting of the fen, the marsh, the quay, 



CHAP. XVI.] LOWLAND SCOTS DIALECT. 311 

the pauper lodging-house, Crabbe has a power as peculiar and as 
individual. Nor is he less great and admirable in his deserip- 
tions of moral suffering — the pangs of plebeian guilt, the hope- 
less sorrow of uncomplaining bereavement, the wild phantoms of 
insanity, the punishment of lost innocence, the unpitied sorrows 
of poverty, ignorance, and neglect. 

It remains to mention two or three remarkable works, written 
in a more lyrical form and measure than those to which we have 
just alluded. The finest of these is ' Sir Eustace Grey,' the story 
of a madman related with tremendous impressiveness by himself; 
of a similar kind is ' The Hall of .Justice ;' and it would be unjust 
to quit Crabbe without saying a word of the admirable and touch- 
ing songs occasionally interspersed among the purely narrative 
poems. Crabbe lived honoured and respected to a great age, and 
died in 1832. 

Great Britain has been inhabited at various epochs by so many 
different races that there still exist an immense number of distinct 
provincial dialects or patois, almost as numerous as the shires 
into which the country is territorially divided. 

None, however, of these numerous dialects have ever been em- 
ployed as a medium of literature; and though a few of our poets 
(as Spenser in his Pastorals, and Jonson in ' The Sad Shepherd') 
have made timid and -ill-assured essays to employ a true rural 
dialect in poetry, yet these essays were so partial in themselves, 
and must be considered to have met with so little success and 
found so few imitators, that we must say that the patois of Eng- 
land properly so called have never been dignified by literary em- 
ployment. It is remarkable that the dialect adopted in the above 
cases was that of the Northern border — the counties of Cumber- 
land and Westmoreland; and this dialect approaches very near to 
the patois of Scotland. But the patois of Scotland forms an ex- 
ception to the remarks we have just made ; and if the reader keeps 
in mind the distinction insisted on in the first chapter of this little 
work, he will easily understand how the Scottish dialect early 
acquired and uninterruptedjy retained the character of a literary 
tongue. The distinction just alluded to is peculiarly important 
for the foreign student of our literature to keep in mind, as a 
neglect of it will cause the greatest confusion in his ideas. He 
must remember that the Scottisii dialect is totally diflerent from 
the Scottish language. The former (usually called Lowland 
Scots) is essentially and absolutely English, containing, it is true, 
a few words and expressions not to be found in the latter speech, 
some of which have arisen from peculiarities of climate, man- 
ners, and natural appearances, and some, singularly enough, being 
French. It differs from the English of London chiefly in pro- 
nunciation, having a broader and more vocalic sound, and pos- 



312 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVI. 

sessing not only an exquisite naivete of sentiment, arising from 
the rustic and pastoral character of tlie people, but a much more 
musical and singing intonation, which renders it admirably adapted 
to be a dress for those beautiful and plaintive national airs for 
which Scotland has ever been so celebrated, and which that country 
possesses in greater number and variety than any nation in the 
world. In fact, the Scottish dialect bears exactly the same rela- 
tion to English as the Doric dialect bore to Attic Greek, and we 
find consequently that Scotland, like Sicily, has possessed many 
a Bion and Theocritus. But it must not be supposed that this 
dialect was a mere patois: it was the speech of the fair, the great, 
the witty, and the wise; and as long as Scotland possessed an 
independent court this beautiful and picturesque dialect was usetl 
by the noblest and the most refined. The union of the two 
kingdoms has of course tended to throw this dialect into disuse 
among the higher classes of Scotland : but it has been for so many 
ages sanctified by associations of glory, nationality, and patriotism ; 
it has been the vehicle for so much of the sweetest and most 
touching poetry; it is so entwined with all the fondest recollec- 
tions of the people, that it will never perhaps descend to the de- 
graded and local position which the comparatively barbarous 
patois of the English counties have always occupied. These 
were the corruptions of peasant-speech — the Scottish dialect was 
a distinct and highly cultivated form of language. The Scottish 
language (spoken only in the Highlands) is the Celtic or Gaelic 
of the ancient Britons, another variety of which is still spoken in 
Wales, and is totally different in origin, grammar, and sound from 
English, and quite as unintelligible to the Lowlander as it is to 
the Londoner. Of this we have no occasion to speak. The 
Lowland Scottish dialect possesses a literature of its own — a lite- 
rature as rich, as ancient, as peculiar, and as admirable as can be 
boasted by many cultivated nations. This vigorous tongue has 
been made the medium for science, for theology, for history, and, 
above all, for poetry of a very high order. " In the fourteenth 
century," says Campbell, himself a Scot, "Barbour celebrated 
the greatest royal hero of his country (Bruce) in a versified 
romance that is not uninteresting. James I. of Scotland ; Henry- 
sone, the author of * Robene and Makyne,' the first known pas- 
toral, and one of the best in a dialect rich with the favours of the 
Pastoral Muse ; Douglas, the translator of Virgil; Dunbar, Mersar, 
and others, gave a poetical lustre to Scotland in the fifteenth cen- 
tury, and filled up a space in the annals of British poetry, after 
the date of Chaucer and Lydgate, that is otherwise nearly barren." 
Dunbar, indeed, is an imaginative poet of a very high order, and 
his 'Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins in Hell' is an allegory of 
astonishing vigour and terrific sublimity — at once Dantesque and 



I CHAP. XVI.] BURNS. 313 

i Spenserian. As a satirist and painlei* of comic character Sir 

■ David Lyndsay is a writer of whom any nation might well be 

proud; and Scotland can trace an uninterrupted succession of 

I truly admirable poets, comic, descriptive, pathetic, or narrative, 

of a merit well worthy of those admirable ballads which are in- 

' separably associated with all that is gayest, tenderest, and most 

. humorous in sentiment, married to the sweetest music in the 

world. 

One of the most remarkable an<l truly national Scottish poets 
I is Allan Ramsay, whose ' Gentle Shepherd' is perhaps the only 
! modern pastoral which can be compared to the exquisite creations 
I of Theocritus. It is the first successful solution of that difficult 
problem, to represent rustic manners as they really are, and at 
the same time so as to make them attractive and graceful. The 
difficulty of the task will best be appreciated by reflecting on 
the innumerable failures, from Virgil down to Shenslone, which 
crowd the annals of literature. But the rustic pictures of Allan 
Ramsay breathe the freshness of real country life — ihey have an 
atmosphere of nature, the breezy freshness of the fields: he has 
revived the magic of Theocritus, and given us a glimpse into the 
interior life of the real shepherds, with their artless vigour and 
unsophisticated feelings. 'I'he immense popularity of this poem 
among the people whose manners it describes (for no other 
readers could generally either understand its language or appre- 
ciate its delicate and local allusions), as well as the existence of 
a vast body of very beautiful songs, would diminish our surprise 
' that Scotland should have produced a number of poets who de- 
I voted to the vernacular literature of their country powers of genius 
which would have made them immortal on a larger theatre than 
; the one which they selected. The greatest of these was undoubt- 
edly Robert Burns, the glory of his country, and one of the 
innumerable instances, in which Britain has been so prolific, of 
genius springing to immortality from the humblest origin. He 
' was born in 1758, and passed the earlier part of his life in strug- 
gling (though with little success) against the toils and distresses of 
• a peasant's life. Having been reduced by misfortunes in his 
I humble career as a farmer, and also in some degree by indulgence 
' in the passions accompanying so excitable and poetical a tempera- 
ment, to the verge of ruin, he was upon the point of quilting his 
country in despair and emigrating to the West Indies, when the 
' unequalled pathos, splendour, and originality of some of his 
lyrics struck many influential members of cultivated society, and 
the poet was induced to remain in Scotland, He now went to 
Edinburgh, where he reigned for some time the undisputed lion, 
the wonder of that literary capital. His conversation was as 
brilliant as his genius was pathetic and sublime, but, unfortunately 
27 



314 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [^CHAP. XVI. 

for himself, the poet could not resist the fascinations of social in- 
dulgence, and the intoxication of universal applause. He retired 
again to the country, and, after fruitlessly struggling for some time 
as an agriculturist, he was obliged, in order to obtain bread for 
his family, to accept an humble situation in the office of Excise. 
This employment, so unfavourable both to habits of temperance 
and to literary occupation, only tended to precipitate the setting 
of this bright and comet-like intelligence: his constitution, worn 
out with excesses, passions, and anxieties, was completely broken 
up, and he died in 1796. 

His works are singularly various and splendid : the greater 
part of them consists of songs, either completely original, or re- 
castings of such compositions of older date: in performing this 
difficult task of altering and improving existing lyrics, in which 
a beautiful thouglit was often buried under a load of mean and 
vulgar expression. Burns exhibits a most exquisite delicacy and 
purity of taste, and an admirable ear for harmony. His own 
songs vary in tone and subject through every changing mood, 
from the sternest patriotism and the most agonising pathos to the 
broadest drollery : in all he is equally inimitable. Most of his 
finest works are written in his own Lowland dialect, and give a 
picture, at once familiar and ideal, of the feelings and sentiments 
of the peasant. It is the rustic heart, but glorified by passion, 
and elevated by a perpetual communing with nature. But he 
has also exhibited perfect mastery when writing pure English, 
and many admirable productions might be cited in which he has 
clothed the loveliest thoughts in the purest language. Consequently 
his genius was not obliged to depend upon the adventitious charm 
and prestige of a provincial dialect. There never perhaps existed 
a mind more truly and intensely poetical than that of Burns. In 
his verses to a Mountain Daisy, which he turned up with his 
plough — in his reflections on destroying, in the same way, the 
nest of a field-mouse, there is a vein of tenderness which no poet 
has ever surpassed. In the beautiful little poem 'To Mary in 
Heaven,' and in many other short lyrics, he has condensed the 
whole history of love, its tender fears, its joys, its frenzy, its ago- 
nies, and its yet sublimer resignation, into the space of a dozen lines. 
No poet ever seems so sure of himself; none goes more directly 
and more certainly to the point ; none is more muscular in his 
expression, encumbering the thought with no useless drapery of 
words, and trusting always for effect to nature, truth, and intens- 
ity of feeling. Consequently no poet more abounds in those 
short and picturelike phrases which at once present the object 
almost to our senses, and which no reflection could either imitate 
or improve. What can be more wonderfully condensed than his 
picture of a patriot warrior — 



CHAP. XVII.3 SCOTT AND SOUTHEY. 315 

** Pressing forward, I'cd-wat-shod'" ? — 

it is absolutely Shakspearian. 

But the region in which Burns is — not perhaps the most su- 
preme, but the most alone, is that of familiar humour, mingled 
with a kind of sly and quaint tenderness. Scottish external 
nature is in his poems represented in its every phase, in its every 
shade of variation ; but he is yet more admirable when he deline- 
ates the interior life of his own thoughtful and moral countrymen. 
There have never been traced by the hand of man such full, such 
tender, such living pictures of rustic life as Burns has left us. 
T^e half-serious half-humorous tale of ' Tarn o' Shanter,' with 
its fantastically terrific diablerie, the satiric gaiety of ' Holy Fair,' 
the ' Scotch Drink,' the ' Elegy on Matthew Henderson,' the 
'Address to the De'il,' all bear witness to the wonderful diversity 
of his powers, to his deep sympathy with all that is noble and 
touching in rustic life, and to his intensely national vein of mingled 
tenderness and humour. The true poet is he who finds the most 
of beauty and of dignity in the universal feelings and interests of 
human life: and increased wisdom and sympathy (the infallible 
attendant on increased wisdom) are rapidly tending to make all 
mankind echo the exclamation of Burns, when he wept at the 
sight of a lovely and peasant-peopled scene : " The sight," he 
said, " of so many smoking cottages gave a pleasure to his mind 
which none could understand who had not witnessed, like him- 
self, the happiness and the worth which they contained." One 
of his most admirable poems, ' The Cotter's Saturday Night,' is 
nothing but an amplification of this profound and beautiful senti- 
ment. 



CHAPTER XVH. 

SCOTTANDSOUTHEY. 

Walter Scott — Tlie Lay of the Last Minstrel — Marmion — Lady of the Lake — 
Lord of the Isles — Waverley — Guy Mannering — Antiquary — Tales of my Land- 
lord — Ivanhoe — Monastery and Abliot — Kenil worth — Pirate — Fortunes of Ni- 
gel — Peveril — Quentin Durward — St. Ronan's Well — Redgauntlet — Tales of 
the Crusaders — Woodstoci< — Chronicles ofthe Canongate — Anne ofGeierstein. 
Robert Southey — TliaJaba and Keiiama — Madoc — Legendary Tales — Rode- 
ricli — Prose Works and Miscellanies. 

There is no author in the whole range of literature, ancient or 
modern, whose works exhibit so perfect an embodiment of united 



316 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVII. 

power and activity as is to he found in Walter'Scott. He is as pro- 
lific as Lope de Vega, as absolutely original as Homer. He was 
descended from one of the most powerful and ancient houses of 
Scotland ; and though his father (a writer to the signet in Edin- 
burgh) was rather an active and intelligent lawyer than a repre- 
sentative of Middle Age nobility, yet the spirit of clanship which 
still so strongly pervades Scottish society was enough to unite 
the poet in sentiment as in blood to the great and powerful family 
of Buccleugh. Having received in his childhood a slight injury, 
whicii rendered him during his whole life a little lame, though it 
did not ultimately alTect the strength of a robust and athletic boc^, 
he passed some of his earliest years among, the romantic scenery 
of his own beautiful country — scenery where every spot had been 
the theatre of warlike or necromantic tradition. Scott afterwards 
passed through a regular course of education, first at the High 
School and afterwards at the University of Edinburgh, where he 
appears, without distinguishing himself by any extraordinary tri- 
umphs, to have acquired the good opinion of his teachers, and to 
have become very popular among his comrades, partly by his 
stores of old legends, and not less by his frank, bold, and adven- 
turous character. It is not easy to conceive a finer specimen of 
humanity than Scott. His frame was vigorous and manly, even 
surpassing the ordinary size and strength ; his features, though 
not classically regular, were animated and attractive; and his 
character was an admirable union of imagination, of good sense, 
and of good nature. Power, in siiort, and goodness were stamped 
upon the man, both within and without. On completing his edu- 
cation, he became a member of the Scottish bar, and was ulti- 
mately appointed, through the recommendation of the head of his 
clan, the Duke of Buccleugh, sherifl' of Selkirk, to which appoint- 
ment were afterwards added one or two others. As a lawyer his 
success, though not extraordinary, was respectable. The society 
of Edinburgh was at that time unusually rich in men of literary 
and philosophical accomplishments, and it was, moreover, en- 
livened and diversified by many relics of tlie political struggles of 
the '45 — old Jacobite gentlemen, whose manners supplied the fu- 
ture novelist with many of his most admirable characters, and 
whose adventures furnished him with many a wild tale of bravery, 
persecution, and escape — the traditions of a romantic age which 
was rapidly passing away. 

Henry Mackenzie, the author of 'The Man of Feeling,' and 
one of the ornaments of Edinburgh literary society, had introduced 
into Scotland a taste for tiie ballad poetry of Germany. It was 
from the study and admiration of 13urger and the minor lyrists 
that the English began to turn their attention to the Teutonic 
muse ; and Scott translated the ' Lenore' and other small compo- 
sitions, chiefly of that wild and spectral character which might 



CHAP. XVII.] SCOTT : LAV OF THE LAST MINSTREL. 317 

have been expected to possess so much novelty for the British pub- 
lic. These translations, some of them executed with great spirit 
and fidelity (as for example the version of Goethe's ' ErlKouig'), 
were contributed by Scott to Lewis's 'Tales of Terror,' the first 
attempt to give specimens of German literature in England. After 
having, by the exercise of reason and good sense, recovered from 
an early love-sorrow, Scott married a young lady of the name of 
Carpenter, who was possessed of a small fortune, and retired to a 
cottage, where, in the very flower of his youth and surrounded 
by domestic happiness, he prepared for future glory by steady 
and uninterrupted labour. 

From very early youth he had exhibited a most intense passion 
for the ballad-poetry in which his own country is even richer than 
England itself; and we know that in childhood his imagination 
had been lighted up by the repeated perusal of Percy's ' Reliques 
of Ancient English Poetry' — that admirable collection which was 
not only the germ of the great romantic revolution in literature, but 
which has perhaps tended more than any book since Homer to 
inspire the youthful writer with a passion for natural unsophisti- 
cated sentiment and vivid description. After translating ' Goetz 
von Berlichingen,' Scott travelled over the Border district, collect- 
ing new stores of ballads from old peasants and wandering rhap- 
sodists, and thus rescuing from oblivion some of the finest pictures 
of simple pathos and heroism, and many curious documents of 
the history of that interesting region : these were published in 
lliree volumes, entitled the ' Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.' 
Nothing could be better calculated as a preparation for the future 
triumphs of the romantic poet and novelist of Scotland than this 
task of love ; and the necessary antiquarian reading and investi- 
gation must have supplied him with an immense store of the ma- 
terials he so well knew how to use. He afterwards published 
another work of a similar nature — a commentary on the singular 
poetical fragments attributed to I'homas of Erceldoune, said to 
have lived in the thirteenth century. 

The first of that long and splendid line of poems whose glory was 
only to be effaced by the intenser splendours of his novels, was 
*The Lay of the Last Minstrel,' published in 1805, and received 
by the public with rapturous delight. In its plan, its versification, 
in the whole design and execution, this was a new and perfectly 
original production ; the reader was presented with a picture, 
fresh, vigorous, vast, and brilliant as Nature herself. It is a tale 
of sorcery and chivalric adventure, as vivid and bright as a real 
poem of the Middle Ages, as faithful, as minute, as picturesque in 
its details ; yet at the same time imbued with the finer sensibility 
of modern literature, and adorned with all the splendours of modern 
art. The tale is supposed to be related by a wandering minstrel, 

27* 



318 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. CcHAP. XVII. 

the last of a profession once so honoured ; and the framing of 
the legend is at once exquisitely beautiful in itself, and admirably 
calculated to set off and relieve the narrative. The description of 
the aged and wandering minstrel, — the diffidence with which he 
begins his legend in the presence of the great lady, and tries to 
recall the inspiration of vanished days, — and the glorious bursts 
of truly Homeric fire when he gets into the full tide of minstrel 
inspiration, — all this is as fine as it is original in conception. Each 
canto is appropriately and artfully introduced with some passage 
of description or retiection ; and these introductions are among 
the most exquisite specimens of Scott's picturesque and enchant- 
ing style. The tale itself is not very well constructed, and, though 
many of the supernatural events are impressive, the character of 
the Goblin Dwarf is unnecessary to the plot, and generally felt to 
be a blemish. The detached scenes — solemn, exciting, or gor- 
geous — are the real strength of the poem. The night-journey of 
Deloraine (an admirable embodiment of the rude mosstrooping 
borderer) to fulfil the command of the Lady of Branksome ; the 
description of Melrose Abbey by moonlight; the scene of the 
opening of the tomb of Michael Scott, and the taking of the book 
of gramarie from the dead hand of the mighty wizard ; the de- 
scription of Lord Howard, — all these are absolutely unequalled 
in their particular manner. Most authors who have attempted to 
evoke the shades of buried ages raise them before our eyes, as 
Samuel was raised by the witch of Endor, rather like shadows 
than with the consistency of reality. Scott revivifies them ; and, 
what is a still greater triumph of art, he puts the spectator into 
the condition of a contemporary: we not only see the things, but 
we see them as through the eyes of (he Middle Ages. The ver- 
sification of this poem, and of most of its successors, consists prin- 
cipally of the rhymed octosyllabic couplet, founded on the favourite 
measure of the Norman Trouveres. This measure, peculiarly 
well adapted to lively narrative, Scott varies, in passages expres- 
sive of passion or more violent movement, with an occasional short 
Adonic verse interposed at irregular intervals among the octosyl- 
labic lines, which in the latter circumstances rhyme together, not 
uniformly in pairs, but often in threes or fours. This kind of 
verse he wields with consummate ease; and though he seems 
always to have written with extraordinary rapidity, and to have 
been nowise assiduous to polish or correct, yet so exquisite was 
his ear, that there are few poets whose versification is more varied 
and fiowing, or more infallibly echoes the feeling and sentiment of 
the moment. 

Scott had now fairly begun that wonderful career which pro- 
duced more of beautiful and wise, and in a more astounding 
variety, than perhaps the whole history of literature can parallel. 



CHAP. XVII.] SCOTT : POEMS. 319 

His activity was inexhaustible, and he was perhaps more accu- 
rately, extensively, and minutely versed in tlie details of INIiddle 
Age art, letters, and social life, than any man of genius wlio ever 
existed. In 1808 appeared ' Marmion,' a tale somewhat similar 
in its scenery and treatment to the 'Lay,' concluding with the fatal 
field of Flodden. Tiie hero is an English knight, valiant and 
wise, but profligate and unscrupulous; and his adventures, which 
principally take place in Scotland, give the poet many opportunities 
for his inimitable painting of natural scenery, of chivalrous life, 
and of interesting historic personages, in particular of King James 
VI. Marmion himself is finely conceived, but the expedient of 
bringing about the catastrophe by representing such a character, 
however wicked, as forging documents, is a fatal blemish to the 
probability of the intrigue in such an age and country. But this 
defect of costume is amply, gloriously redeemed by the splendour, 
fire, energy, and livingness with which brilliant and varied scenes 
succeed each other in this magnificent evocation of chivalrous 
days, The voyage of the nuns is one of the very finest pictures 
even in Scott's vast gallery : the reader is carried bounding on like 
the bark ; the verses breathe the very freshness of the sea. In the 
scene describing the immuringof Constance before the grim tribunal 
in the vaults of Lindisfarn Abbey, Scott has ventured into the lofiy 
regions of terror and pity ; and how wonderfully is this awful 
episode contrasted with the exquisite grace of the Scottish court, 
when the fair Lady Heron sings the ballad of Lochinvar ! Tiie 
battle-scene with which this poem concludes is indeed, to use the 
words of Shakspeare, — 

" A fearful battle render'd you in music." 

The majestic pomp of preparation, the breathless pause, the roar- 
ing onset, the struggle, the carnage, — all is there : the reader feels 
liis teeth setting, his breath held in, his blood rushing backward 
to the heart: it is as real as anything in the Iliad; and the wail of 
lamentation and defeat, and the death of the conscience-haunted 
Marmion, form a most admirable and appropriate conclusion to 
that woful day 

"Of Flodden's fatal field, 
Where shiver'd was fair Scotland's spear, 
And broken was her shield." 

Two years after this noble work was produced ' The Lady of 
the Lake,' perhaps the completest and finest poetical conception 
of this astonishing genius. In this poem the scene is transferred 
to a region still more new to English readers, and more picturesque 
in itself; the country surrounding tlie beautiful Loch Katrine, and 
situated on the borders between the civilized Lowlands and the 
mountains inhabited by the Celtic tribes, is the theatre of the ac- 



320 OUTLINES OF GE^ERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVII. 

tion, and the feuds between tlie two races (ever at enmity) its 
principal material. Tlie intrigue, though simple enough, is artful 
and interesting ; it consists partly of the adventures of King James, 
who has lost his way in the chase, and is received with hospitality 
in the secret retreat of his former favourite, Douglas, now banished 
and disgraced ; and partly of his knight-errant-like encounter (in 
disguise) with Roderick Dhu, the formidable chief of a Highland 
clan which has long defied the power of the Lowland monarch. 
Roderick, the stern and haughty chieftain ; Ellen, the daughter of 
the Douglas line, yet graceful and simple as peasant maiden ; old 
Allan Bane, the harper ; Douglas, with his proud heart swelling 
under the remembrance of his king's ingratitude — what noble 
types of character, and how freely and unaffectedly do they move 
before us ! Certainly nothing can be finer than the approach of 
Roderick along the lake, the duel between him and Fitz-James, 
or the death of the captive Highland chieftain. Scott appears to 
have been conscious of his peculiar power of describing battles,. 
for he makes the harper relate to Roderick in prison the combat 
between the captive's clan and the troops of King James, and 
perhaps even the noble and stirring description of Flodden does 
not surpass the battle of Bealan Duine in ' The Lady of the 
Lake,' and the death of Roderick, in the mid swing and fury of 
the minstrel's rhapsody, is nobly and touchingly conceived. It 
would be unjust to speak of the exquisite descriptions of scenery, 
both lovely and sublime, with which this poem (particularly its 
earlier portion) is crowded, without mentioning also, and with 
equal praise, the charming glimpses into private life which the 
poet takes as he goes along, and the splendid descriptions of cus- 
toms, superstitions, &c., which form the subordinate decorations 
of the work. Few things are more truly pathetic than the little 
episode of the poor maniac, Blanche of Devon, more impressive 
than the scene of the Fiery Cross, more exciting than the narra- 
tive of the rapid flight of that ensign of war and blood to summon 
the clansmen to the trysting-place. 

After this, perhaps his greatest poetical triumph, Scott some- 
what changed the direction and form of his productions; his next 
work, which appeared in 1811, was ' The Vision of Don Rode- 
rick,' founded upon a striking legend, which relates that Roderick, 
the last Gothic King of Spain, persisted, in spite of all dissuasion, 
in descending into a subterranean vault beneath the catliedral of 
Toledo, where he saw, prefigured in a kind of phantasmagorin, 
the invasion of the Moors, and all the ills which his own unbridled 
passions were to inflict upon his house and kingdom. Scott has 
somewhat enlarged this impressive groundwork, and made to pass 
before the eyes of the impious monarch, not only tlic irruption of 
the Moorish conquerors, but also the dreadful cruelties and op- 



CHAPI XVII.] SCOTT : POEMS. 321 

pressions of the armies of Napoleon. It is written in the Spen- 
serian stanza, and with something of the Spenserian richness and 
cumbrous profusion of ornament and allegory ; and it would seem 
that in quitting the troKvere metre, which he wielded so nobly, 
Scott had lost much of his peculiar verve and fire. 

Two years after this not very successful effort in a new line, 
Scott returned to his old one, and published ' Rokeby,' and ' The 
Bridal of Triermain,' which appeared within a single twelvemonth. 
In the former of these poems he most injudiciously selected a 
period too modern, and in general there is perceptible in this work 
a faintness and uncertainty of hand which are not altogether re- 
deemed by a few beautiful passages. In the other work a short 
adventure, taken from the old books of chivalry, is related with 
much grace and vigour, but the enchanted castle is too dreamy 
and unsubstantial to interest us like 'Marmion,' or ' The Lady of 
the Lake ;' and our feeling of probability is outraged by the way 
in which the magical and fabulous is brought in contact with the 
action of a real knight. The purely fiibulous part, describing the 
amour of King Arthur with the fairy lady, the reappearance of 
their daughter at the tournament of Carleon, the tourney itself, 
and the enchanted slumber of the maiden in the castle of the 
Valley of St. John — all this is in the finest vein of Romanz poetry. 
Nor is the description of the watching of the knight unworthy of 
our chivalric Homer, but the adventures which break the spell of 
this " sleeping beauty" seem to us not in the finest vein of Middle 
Age conception. They are rather like the chivalry of a ballet 
than a page from the Morte Arlus. 

In 1814 appeared 'The Lord of the Isles,' a romantic narra- 
tive, in which the principal personage is the heroic Robert Bruce, 
some of whose almost incredible adventures Scott has skilfully 
and j)icturesquely recalled. The action is chiefly carried on amid 
the savage and desolate scenery of the Western Isles, particularly 
in the castle of Artornish, and afterwards amid the still bleaker 
and more tremendous deserts of C4allovvay. The catastrophe is 
the great battle of Bannockburn, and the poet's patriotism has 
fired the description of this event, so glorious in the reminiscences 
of every Scot, witli a glow and xstrum which recall the con- 
eluding stanzas of ' Marmion.' But the story is rather entangled, 
and the march of the events is sometimes languishing and some- 
times precipitate. 

We have but two more poems to mention, 'The Field of 
Waterloo,' and ' Harold the Dauntless,' of which the former 
appeared in 1815, and its companion in the following year. 
' Waterloo' was written while the impressions of a recent visit to 
that battle-field were still fresh in the poet's mind ; but the work 
(which is fortunately short) is entirely unworthy of the author's 



322 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVIl. 

genius and glory. In ' Harold the Dauntless' we have the story 
of a wild and savage Berserkir, who is recalled by love from his 
fierce idolatry to civilization and Christianity. The principal 
character is not ill conceived, but the adjuncts and general cos- 
tume of the poem are rather chivalric than Scandinavian; and 
though some of the events are in character with the wild legends 
of the Norwegian Sagas, yet the effect of the whole is not in har- 
mony with the design. 

Even so early as 1805, at the period when 'The Lay of the 
Last Minstrel' burst, like a new avatar of the beauty and power 
of mediaeval art, upon the public of Great Britain, Scott had com- 
menced a prose tale embodying some of the striking scenes con- 
nected with that romantic event of Scottish history, the gallant 
but disastrous expedition of Prince Charles Edward, i. e. the 
unsuccessful attempt of the Jacobites to replace upon the British 
throne the house of Stuart. This event (commonly called the 
Rebellion of the '45) involved a very great number of the most 
ancient houses of Scodand, and it should be remembered that that 
country was markedly inclined to prefer the party of the Stuarts 
to that of the succession of the house of Brunswick. This period 
of strong passions and vehement contrasts of political feeling was 
of course fertile in originality of character, singular traits of cou- 
rage, and surprising vicissitudes of fortune, and Scott was per- 
sonally acquainted with a multitude of " old '45 men," as they 
were called, whose adventures he was very fond of relating, and 
Avhose feelings he has immortalized in so many of his admirable 
fictions. The first sketch of this novel was abandoned after a 
few chapters only had been composed, and the sheets were put 
away in an old writing-desk with a quantity of fishing-tackle, and 
almost totally forgotten by the author. On the appearance, in 
1813, of ' Rokeby' and 'The Bridal of Triermain,' poems which 
were considered by the public as manifestly inferior to his pre- 
ceding compositions, Scott's admirable common sense suggested 
to him that his peculiar poetical vein of chivalrous fiction was 
now almost exhausted, and that there was little hope that he 
could, by continuing before the public in the same strain of Mid- 
dle Age revival, vie with the already dazzling poetical reputation 
of Byron, which had as it were taken England by storm. He 
turned his thoughts to prose ; and, drawing the unfinished MS. of 
wliich we have spoken from its inglorious repose in the writing- 
desk, he completed the tale, and it appeared in_ 1814, the same 
year as ' The Lord of the Isles,' under the tide of ' Waverley, or 
'Tis Sixty Years since.' This was the first of that illustrious 
series of prose fictions which have placed Scott, it is hardly too 
much to say, almost upon a level with Shakspeare. The novel 
was published anonymously, and the public instanUy perceived 



CHAP. XVII.] SCOTT : WAVERLEY GUY MANNERING. 323 

that a new era in the history of fiction had hegun. The plot is 
exceedingly simple, and not remarkable for any great ingenuity; 
but the absolute novelty of the scenery, the immense number, 
richness, and variety of the characters, the brief, picturelike, and 
inimitable sketches of natural beauty, and the freedom, freshness, 
and naturalness of the situations, comic as well as elevated, soon 
excited a universal rapture of admiration. 

The tone in Scott, like that of Shakspeare, is always an essen- 
tially noble and elevated one — elevated and elevating. All ob- 
jects are shown, as it were, through a fresh and sunny atmosphere: 
all is in its true colour, proportion, and perspective, but glorified 
by a genial glow of goodness and humanity. Many of the cha- 
racters of ' Waverley' are masterpieces : the brave, gallant, but 
pedantic old Baron Bradwardine is equally delightful amid the 
I'eudal splendours of his ancestral bears, and scribbling his texts 
of Livy on the walls of his cave. What noble figures are those 
of (he haughty Vich Ian Vohr and his high-souled sister; how 
full of life and movement the camp of the insurgents ; how 
pathetic the trial of the rebels; how exquisite the thousand minor 
characters which crowd these living pages — the fantastic " inno- 
cent" Davie Gellatlie, with his snatches of song, as pathetic as 
the ballads of Ophelia herself — the pig-headed Balmawhapple — 
the faithful Micklewham and Galium Beg ! Scott had the true 
Shakspearian quality of going out of himself to create — of throw- 
ing his own mind so completely into the subject immediately be- 
fore him, that the creator seems successively to be absolutely 
identified with all his creations. 

The universal enthusiasm which greeted the appearance of 
' Waverley' had hardly time to subside into calm admiration 
when ' Guy Mannering' was published (in 1815, the next year). 
This novel exhibits a still wider range of power than the preceding 
one. It did not rely upon the prestige which attaches to a ro- 
mantic episode in history, and to the interest derivable from the 
introduction of historical personages and adventures so interest- 
ing in themselves as those connected with the '45. In ' Guy 
Mannering' we enter upon a new and more domestic sphere, the 
family of a simple Scottish country gentleman, and we find our- 
selves in the midst of characters, common and everyday enough 
in their definition, but admirably brought out and contrasted. 
Scott's personal experience and his legal recolleciions probably 
supplied him with nearly all the types of common and low life 
which he has so admirably individualized in this enchanting story : 
but with what consummate tact has he avoided the tone of exag- 
geration and romance which their employment would be very apt 
to inspire ! If the highest manifestation of creative genius be 
the power of inventing scenes and persons which are at once sur- 



324 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVII. 

prising and natural, strongly individual in themselves, yet in per- 
fect accordance with the types of reality, then it is impossible to 
deny Scott the honours due to the highest creative genius. Ho- 
race says emphatically, " difficile est proprie communia dicere;" 
and his remark, extended in its application so as to embrace the 
inventive as well as the expressive in art, is a formula of criticism 
of great value. The union of the abstract and the concrete is 
the highest triumph of art. It was the boast of Apelles that he 
used only four primitive colours in his pictures, and the history 
of all literature proves that the greatest triumphs of genius have 
ever been attained by the use of the simplest elements of external 
or moral existence. It is the mere vibration of a stretched 
chord that speaks the unutterable language of music; and it is 
from the skilful contrast and genial study of most ordinary human 
characters that Scott has read us his noblest lessons of wisdom 
and of love. Dominie Sampson is one of those admirable hils 
of conception which enter, at once and for ever, like Shakspeare's 
characters, into the sphere of reality. We think of him not as a 
creation of genius, but as a man; we involuntarily place him in 
our thoughts beside Uncle Toby, Parson Adams, and Lear's Fool. 
Nor are the minor elements less admirable: the two young ladies 
(the most difhcult of all characters to render interesting) are deli- 
cately and charmingly contrasted ; Pleydell (supposed to be a 
sketch from nature), Henry Bertram, the scoundrel Glossin, Mac 
Morlan, — all, down to honest Jock Jabez the postillion, are living, 
natural, unforced, unaffected. In this romance the events whicli 
bring about the ruin of the rascally Glossin, and restore Bertram 
to the inheritance of his ancestors, are at once natural and sur- 
prising : the funeral of the old Laird, and the sale of his estate ; 
Henry Bertram's wanderings in the wastes of the Northern 
Border; that breathless episode where he is concealed by the 
gipsy in the ruined hut of Derncleugh ; the visit of Mannering 
to Edinburgh, and the legal saturnalia of High Jinks; the funeral 
of the old maid, and the inimitable scene of the opening of her 
will; and, above all, every "passage in which Dinmont makes his 
appearance, — we may boldly say that all these scenes, and a 
thousand others, are set before us with astonishing freedom, ease, 
and power. 

In 1816 appeared 'The Antiquary,' which gives us a new and 
not less interesting glimpse into the interior life of the Scottish 
people, and gives another proof of the all-embracing and inex- 
haustible character of the great man's genius. The chief per- 
sonage in this novel, the Antiquary himself, is a truly genial 
creation — as complete and as individual as Jaques or Falstatl"; 
and the book abounds, even more wonderfully perhaps than 
Scott's other works, with perfect and happy strokes of human 



CHAP. XVII.] BLACK DWARF OLD MORTALITY. 325 

character : we need only mention the worthy but weak Sir Arthur, 
Miss Grizel Oldbuck, Hector Mclntyre, the warlike Baillie, and, 
above all, Edie Ochiltree. The passage describing the party 
caught by the rising tide at the loot of the clitl's is perhaps 
unequalled ; and the mixture here, as well as in all others of 
Scott's works, of familiar and even ludicrous incidents with the 
most powerful and terrific emotions, is another strong element of 
the writer's power. In our remarks upon Shakspeare we ob- 
served that this mingling of trivial and agitating ideas is one of 
the peculiar conditions of the very highest power of genius. 

In the same year with this exquisite work appeared the first 
series of 'The Tales of My Landlord,' containing the ' Black 
Dwarf and 'Old Mortality ;' the first of which was much shorter 
and less powerful than its companion. These tales were pre- 
ceded by a kind of fictitious introduction, attributing their author- 
ship to Peter Pattieson, an usher in a village school — an expedient 
(adopted to mislead the public as to these tales being the compo- 
sition of the now illustrious "Author of Waverley," for which 
purpose also a new publisher was selected) neither very happy 
in itself nor very felicitously executed. The presiding genius, 
the Bens ex machinci, of ' The Black Dwarf (the deformed mis- 
anthrope who gives name to the tale) is one of those irregulari- 
ties of nature which inspire rather pity than interest; and though 
•^as in this instance, Elshie the Recluse being drawn from a real 
personage — of occasional occurrence in the actual world, are yet 
too rare, and too repulsive consequently, to forma proper founda- 
tion for a plot of real life. Scott's genius had no need of dwarfs 
and monsters to set agoing the wheels of his intrigue : these are 
the resources of inferior inventors. Elliott and his family, and 
the wolfish mosstrooper, Willie of the Westburnflat — the two 
poles, so to say, of border character — are contrasted with con- 
summate skill. 

The companion-novel to 'The Black Dwarf was 'Old Mor- 
tality,' a fiction of much higher pretensions, greater length, and 
completer historical interest : indeed, this is one of the very finest 
fictions that the world has ever seen. It describes the adventures 
of the Scottish Covenanters from the skirmish of Drumclog to 
the great battle, so fatal to their cause, of Bothwell Brigg. The 
tale opens just after the murder of Archbishop Sharpe, and the 
hero of the intrigue, a young gentleman who is led, by conviction 
no less than by family sympathies, to embrace the cause of the 
insurrection, is naturally and easily brought in contact with the 
most remarkable men of both parties, and is involved in the full 
vortex of events. Thus we have splendid sketches of the famous 
Claverhouse, of General Dalziel, and other celebrated royalists, 
and on the other hand a most admirable picture of the fierce, 
28 



326 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVIl. 

persecuted, and fanatical Covenanters. There has perhaps sel- 
dom been a finer example of the difficult feat of mingling in one 
delineation real and fictitious things and events. Claverhouse, 
for example, is as individual, and yet as ideal, as Talbot, or 
Wolsey, or Henry V., in tlie historical plays of our divine 
dramaturge. 

Of the purely invented characters in this grand creation it is 
impossible to speak in too high terms ; nor of their variety, nor 
of their truth, nor of the wonderful power with which the author 
has harmonized tiiem with the solider personages borrowed from 
history. To the reader, indeed, they appear to have no less con- 
sistence, and he cannot refrain from associating them with the au- 
thentic events when he afterwards reflects upon the annals of the 
limes. The Lady of Tillietudlem, Mause Headrigg and her son 
Cuddy, the old Major and his veteran servant Pyke, the mean 
and griping Milnwood, Serjeant Bolhwell, the kind but grumbling 
housekeeper — all these are almost real existences, as real as the 
loftier conceptions of the covenanting preachers and their wild 
followers : Mucklewrath, and the fierce and crafty Burley, ad- 
vancing gradually from fanaticism to crime, and from crime to 
religious frenzy. There is also a very deep knowledge of the 
human heart in the manner in which the character of Morton, 
the hero, is gradually modified by the stern and agitating scenes 
which he passes through; and the touches of simple pathos, the 
exquisite scenes of rustic gaiety, and the innumerable nooks of tran- 
quil domestic life or lovely rural nature into which we glance, as 
it were, while borne onward by the interest of the story — all these 
form a picture which has the vastness, the minuteness, the dis- 
tinctness, and the splendour of life itself. 

In 1818 was published the second series of the 'Tales of My 
Landlord,' comprising ' Rob Roy' and ' The Heart of Midlothian.' 
In ' Rob Roy' Scott has again ventured, and more boldly, into a 
region which he had visited with success in ' The Lady of the 
Lake' and in one portion of ' Waverley,' The Highlands form 
the theatre of action, and the exploits of the famous freebooter who 
gives name to the work the most prominent materials, of this fic- 
tion. These scenes and manners, then quite new to the English 
reader, and which even an inferior talent could hardly render un- 
interesting, are admirably diversified, and connected with charac- 
ters and events of a much more familiar kind. The sketch of a 
London merchant in Mr. Osbaldistone, with which the tale com- 
mences, is very finely cont:eived, and no less so the charming 
character of Owen, the faithful clerk. The scene soon changes 
to the North of England, where the family of a rude fox-hunting 
squire is exquisitely contrasted with that most delicate and lovely 
of all Scott's creations, the beautiful Di Vernon. 



CHAP. XVII.] ROB ROY HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN. 327 

Nor can anything be, finer than the Highland scenes and clia- 
racters which fill the greater part of this book: how romantic and 
yet how real is Rob Roy himself; with what an atmosphere of 
wild energy is the far-famed freebooter — the Robin Hood of 
Scotland — surrounded ; and yet how skilfully has the author, by 
intermingling perpetual details of familiar life and common feel- 
ing, brought him, as it were, near to ns, giving him flesh and 
blood, and substituting the genial air of everyday humanity for 
that mist)'- and unsubstantial grandeur which an inferior author 
would have left around it! Helen Macgregor is a conception of 
a very high order of art, and the scene of the defeat of the Eng- 
lish detachment and the horrible punishment of the wretched 
Morris is intensely exciting. The comic incidents, too, mingled 
here as everywhere in Scott's more tremendous and impressive 
scenes, only add to the efli'ect, and give a more intense reality to 
the narrative. Constructively speaking, the chief defect of Scott's 
romances arises from the hurried manner in which he winds up 
his narratives. He probably always (as indeed he has told us 
himself) laid down, when commencing one of his fictions, a plan 
or ground-plot of the whole intrigue ; but the intensity with which 
the scenes presented themselves to his glorious imagination, and 
the delight (to such a mind must have been, and was, unspeaka- 
ble) of tracing through every ramification such a character as 
Dalgetty, for instance, or Baillie Nicol Jarvie, or Monkbarns, or 
Bradwardine, or Dominie Sampson, soon carried him from the 
outline he had fixed upon, and forced him, at the risk of writing 
not a novel but a library, to hurry hastily over the conclusion. 
To a conception like his, joined with so intense and wonderful a 
perceptive faculty, the delineation of such personages must have 
given the double delight of the inventor and the historian. What 
he absolutely created as ideal, he must have anatomised as real. 
In the ' Heart of Midlothian' we have a narrative of humble — 
nay, the humblest — peasant life of Scotland. We have here the 
joys and woes, the weaknesses and the heroism of the poor; de- 
scribed with no afl^ected raptures of senlimentalism, with no unreal 
views of life, neither suppressio veri nor suf^gestio falsi — a sim- 
ple tale of obscure sorrow and unadorned heroism, connected with 
pictures of society as vast and varied as they are accurate and 
lively. The Edinburgh riot with which the tale opens is de- 
scribed with a power that even this picturesque author has never 
surpassed : and the frightful and agitating scenes of popular ven- 
geance are most skilfully made to give way to the calm repose of 
rustic existence. David Deans is one of those grim, strongly- 
marked, yet unattractive portraits which are as characteristic of 
Scott's pencil as the spectacled rabbis and alchemists and burgo- 
masters of that of Rembrandt. The two daughters are exquisitely 



328 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVII. 

contrasted — the unhappy Effie, with her beauty, her innocent 
vanity, and the pretty wilfidness of the spoiled chikl ; and when 
the ploughshare of sin and shame and sorrow drives so ruthlessly 
over this nook of human life, and the " Lily of St. Leonard's" is 
crushed to the earth, how artlessly, how sublimely does Jeannie 
arise to save her erring sister ! Among all the tributes which 
genius has ever paid to the modest heroism of rustic life, this is 
perhaps the noblest and the most enduring; and when we revere 
the name of Scott for the glory which he has thrown over human 
nature by this noble and touching delineation, let us remember 
that it was not all fictitious, and that the same country which gave 
birth to him who has recorded this triumph of village heroism was 
also the fatherland of a real Helen Walker. 

The following year witnessed the appearance of ' The Bride 
of Lammermoor' and the ' Legend of Montrose' — forming the 
third series of the ' Tales of My Landlord.' The ' Bride' is a 
work which differs remarkably in its tone from Scott's other pro- 
ductions : it has been well remarked that this touching and most 
painful story exemplifies in a narrative form the incessant action 
of Destiny — of that awful and mysterious power which vivifies 
and pervades the ancient Greek tragedy. We see, even at the 
very beginning of the tale, the " little cloud, no bigger than a 
man's hand," which gradually overshadows the whole atmo- 
sphere, and at last bursts in ruin, in madness, and in despair 
over the devoted heads of Ravenswood and his betrothed. The 
catastrophe is tremendous, crushing, complete ; and even the 
more comic scenes (the melancholy ingenuity of poor faithful 
Caleb) have a sad and hopeless gaiety, which forms a dismal 
and appropriate relief to the profoundly tragic tone of the action. 
One scene in this awful tale is truly terrific — the muttered cursing 
of the three hideous hags at the ill-omened marriage ; nor is the 
interview between Ravenswood and the grave-digger, or the ap- 
pearance of the unhappy hero to claim his promise from Lucy 
Ashton, inferior. They bear the impress of our elder dramatists: 
they might have been conceived by Ford, by Middleton, or by 
the sombre genius of Webster. 

Li the 'Legend of Montrose' Scott returns into his more usual 
and congenial sphere of bright, vivid, energetic, and picturesque 
animation. We come forth, saddened and yet elevated, out of 
the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and we plunge with fresh 
ardour into the sparkling, buoyant waves of romantic life. The 
tale is very short and hurried ; and though it contains several 
scenes drawn with Scott's usual power of lively description, it is 
not generally found in itself one of the most interesting, but de- 
rives its principal charm from the humours of " Rittmaster Du- 
gnld Dalgefty," a soldier of fortune, one of the most truly rich, 



CHAP. XVn.] IVANHOE MONASTERY ABBOT. 329 

admirable, amusing, and natural personages ever drawn by the 
hand of genius. This character is a masterpiece: the mixture 
of pedantry, conceit, valour, vulgar assurance, knowledjie of the 
world, greediness, and a thousand other qualities, makes him uni- 
formly and never-failingly delightful whenever he appears, as he 
does most cot^tantly, on the scene. 

The last series of the ' Tales of My Landlord' were followed 
by a number of detached romances, more than maintaining the 
reputation which Scott had already acquired; in 07ie year, 1820, 
appeared 'Ivanhoe,' ' The Monastery,' and ' The Abbot,' the last- 
mentioned work being a continuation of the second, though at the 
same time capable of being read as a distinct narrative. In ' Ivan- 
hoe' our magician has evoked a new period of English history, 
and one which had never before been revived in fiction. This 
was the romantic age of Richard Coeur-de-Lion ; and it offered 
ihe occasion not only of showing in strong opposition the sturdy 
prejudices and rude manners of the Saxons and the warlike and 
splendid civilization of the Norman race, but of introducing many 
of the most remarkable characters of our popular history — the 
Lionheart himself, the abominable John, and our legendary heroes 
of the bow and quarter-staff, Robin Hood and his "merry men." 
The rude log-built mansion of the Saxon noble, the frowning 
battlements of the Norman castle, the glittering lists of Ashby, the 
dungeon, the hermitage, and the " good green wood," — every 
object remains for ever pictured on the reader's memory. And 
then the characters : Cedric, Wamba, Gurth, Front-de-Boeuf, 
Locksley, Friar Tuck, Le Noir Faineant, Rebecca, Isaac the Jew, 
the stern Master of the 'J'emplars — all, down to the humblest, 
arise before our astonished eyes " in the habit as they lived." 

' The Monastery' is principally injured by the introduction of 
supernatural machinery. The White Lady of Avenel, a kind of 
tutelary spirit protecting the fortunes of a noble family, is not in 
accordance with that air of reality which Scott communicates to 
all his fictions. The appearances of this tricksy spirit are indeed 
beautifully described, and the poetry which conveys her oracles 
— "for still her speech was song" — is exceedingly graceful ; but 
her agency is unnecessary, it impedes the story, and some of her 
pranks are quite unworthy the dignity of her mission. All that 
she does could have been effected much better without her ; and 
she is invariably found to jar with the rest of the action. Christie 
of the Clinthill is a spirited sketch of the lean, wolfish, dissolute 
Jackman ; and the scenes in the castle of Julian Avenel are drawn 
with a powerful and pathetic hand; but the euphuist. Sir Piercy 
Shafton, though amusing, is a caricature of what was already a 
caricature of Shakspeare's. Generally speaking, this novel is less 
admired (we think deservedly so) than its successor, ' The Abbot,' 

28* 



330 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVII. 

in which we resume the adventures of the two brothers whom we 
left in ' The Monastery' just entering upon life. The chief per- 
sonage is the unhappy Mary Stuart, whose character and misfor- 
tunes possess in fiction a power of tender and pathetic interest as 
inexhaustible as the fascination she exerted on all around her 
(luring her life, and which no lapse of time seems likely to 
deprive of its enchantment. The dramatis personx of this great 
and living work are numerous and splendid ; the Regent Murray, 
the stern and haughty I^ady Douglas, Catherine Seton, Adam 
Woodstock the falconer, Roland Graeme, — all are stamped with 
life and individuality. Nor is the breathless interest of the prin- 
cipal events less worthy of admiration, nor the fresh animation 
and vivacity of the dialogues, nor the noble spirit of dignity and 
gentleness that pervades the whole. 

The following year, 1821, was signalised by two more produc- 
tions of this astonishing being, two singularly different, not only 
from each other, but from all which preceded them, and marked 
by the same power and beauty : these were ' Kenilworth' and 
' The Pirate.' Kenilworth was a gorgeous pageant of a period of 
our history dear and glorious to every English heart — -the reign of 
Elizabeth. The chief action is the secret marriage of the great 
and splendid Leicester, Elizabeth's favourite, with a beautiful 
woman of inferior rank, and the fatal facility with which the 
haughty courtier, listening to the dictates of ambition and the 
perfidious advice of a wicked intriguer, sacrifices to the hope of 
becoming the Queen's husband the happiness and the life of his 
innocent victim. Much of this romance is founded on fact: the 
splendid revelries of Kenilworth are copied from authentic docu- 
ments of the time, only vivified and gilded by the glow of genius ; 
Sussex — the frank and noble Sussex — Raleigh, Leicester himself, 
Elizabeth, are faithful and glorious reproductions of history ; and 
the manners, costume, and, so to speak, atmosphere of the whole 
"work afford perhaps the noblest instance which literature can 
show of the power of genius to evoke past ages and persons in 
the brilliant hues and motion of life. Perhaps, amid the thousand 
fictions of the so-called romantic school to which the success of 
Scott gave birth, there are no scenes even approaching in proba- 
bility, in ease, grace, and splendour, to the audience in this 
romance where the lion-hearted Queen commands the reconcilia- 
tion of Leicester and Sussex, to the episode of Raleigh's first 
court success, to the passages in the country hostelry of the Black 
Bear, to the entry of Elizabeth into Kenilworth ; and assuredly 
the power of pathetic terror was never displayed more intensely 
and with a more Shakspearian conciseness than in the murder of 
Amy Robsart. 

In 'The Pirate' we have a new and untrodden region, new 



CHAP. XVII.] THE PIRATE NIGEL PEVERIL. 331 

manners, a new nature; we are transported to tlie "stormy He- 
brides," 

" Placed far amid the melancholy main," 

and inhabited by a people of ancient Norwegian descent. Even 
in this barren nook of earth, where human character might be 
expected to be as monotonous as its starved and storm-lashed 
herbage, he has found a rich harvest of interest and beauty : the 
noble old Udaller; his two daughters, each so lovely a picture, 
yet distinguished with so gentle a touch, like Celia and Rosalind ; 
Noma of the Fitful-head, half-maniac, half-pythoness ; Claude 
Halcro, Mistress Babie, and the unfortunate Yellowley, Bunce, 
and the whole company of buccaneers. 

The next romance we have to mention is 'The Fortunes of 
Nigel,' which appeared in the following year, 1832. Here we 
have a glimpse into the city life of London in the sixteenth cen- 
tury, and the action is as vast, as crowded, and as varied as the 
theatre. The court and the domestic manners of the weak and 
pedantic, but well-meaning James I., that crowned humorist ; the 
shop, the street, the tavern, the ordinary, the theatre, and, above 
all, the squalid retreats of crime and misery — Alsatia; everything 
appears before us in its true colours, with its true light and shade 
and true proportion, and peopled with figures so varied, so lifelike 
and individual, that, after reading the novel, we cannot divest our- 
selves of a firm conviction of the reality of persons, places, and 
events. So much so, indeed, is this the case with nearly all 
Scott's historical novels, that, when we afterwards find in au- 
thentic history any proofs of occasional incorrectness or even 
anachronism in these fictions, we deny the evidence of our 
reason, and cannot be induced to think that the manners, the 
characters, or the events, could have been otherwise than as the 
artist has represented them. Thus it is hardly a paradox to say, 
that the creations of sublime genius are more real than reality, 
more true than truth itself; and that we really know more of the 
character of Hamlet, for instance, than we do of Napoleon, or 
even of a man with whom we are in daily personal intercourse. 
In this novel of ' Nigel' the character of King James is a case in 
point to our remark ; and the numerous other dramatis personx 
are marked by the same power. The murder of the old usurer 
in Whitefriars is a most terrific bit of night-painting, and the action 
flows on with a clear and rapid current. 

The year 1823 again gave to the astounded world three excel- 
lent and wonderfully varied fictions — ' Peveril of the Peak,' 
' Quentin Durward,' and ' St. Ronan's Well.' In ' Peveril' we 
have a picture of English society soon after the restoration of 
Charles II., and many pictures of the court and of the various 



332 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVII. 

parties which divided the nation at the period of the ridiculous" 
panic of Titus Gates' pretended popish plot. The most interest- 
ing characters are Sir Geoffrey Peveril, a stout okl Derbyshire 
cavalier; a finely marked sketch of a fanatical republican, Major 
Bridgenorth, a relic of the Protectorate ; and, above all, Charles 
himself, the easy, heartless, good-natured libertine, 

" Who never said a foolish thing, 
And never did a wise one." 

Villiers, the profligate Duke of Buckingham, is brought promi- 
nently forward ; but in attempting to give identity to that extra- 
ordinary compound of vices, follies, wit, and inconsistency, our 
novelist has signally failed. He followed the admirable character 
given in Dryden's immortal satire, and produced, not a man, but 
a bundle of epigrams. The plot of this piece is chiefly carried 
on by Christian, one of those passionless and all-penetrating in- 
triguers whom we so often see in novels, and so seldom in real 
life ; and his principal instrument for the attainment of his purpose 
(a long-cherished plan of revenging on the Countess of Derby 
the death of his brother) is the employment of a deaf and dumb 
girl, who afterwards turns out to be his own daughter, and to 
have been shamming deaf and dumb for a long succession of 
years. All this is hardly natural, and not worthy, even if it were, 
of such a genius as that of Scott. 

' Durward' carries us to France and Burgundy in the reign of 
Louis XL, and we follow with unceasing delight and interest the 
progress of a young Scottish soldier of fortune to fame, riches, 
and the hand of a fair countess. His first interview with Louis, 
who is disguised as a mean old merchant, and attended by his 
abominable minister Tristan I'Hermite, is highly dramatic, and 
the gradual view we gain of the dark and tortuous character of 
that cruel and miserable king, and his gloomy retreat in the casfle 
of Plessis, is extremely fine. None of Scott's works is more 
powerfully conceived than this, nor has he in any other instance 
displayed a broader and vaster canvas, filled up with more strik- 
ing and varied groups. The vile instruments which the subtle 
monarch employs to carry out his perfidious policy — the catlike 
barber Gliver le Dain, Tristan and his two congenial satellites, 
Petit Andre and Trois-Echelles, the. wretched Bohemian — how 
finely are these relieved against the nobler characters, historical 
as well as fictitious, and how admirably are they all grouped 
around the grand images of the two protagonists — Louis, and 
('harles of Burgundy, the wolf and the bull of middle-age history, 
one the emblem and embodiment of Fraud, the other of brutal 
Force ! Dunois, Crevecoeur, Galeotti, Crawford, the rude bravery 
of the Balafre — it is absolutely impossible to draw any line of 



CHAP, 



XVII.] ST. RONAN's well REDGAUNTLET. 333 



distinction between the phantoms of real men evoked by this 
" mighty magic" from the dusty tomb of history, and those 
created by its power. The scenes at Peronne are written with 
a firm hand and a sort of triumphant mastery, which ahnost 
makes us forget the terrific impressiveness of the attack on the . 
bishop's castle at Liege, and ihe murder of the good prelate by 
the ruffian De la Marck. 

In 'St. Konan's Weir we have scenes and manners of modern 
society, but the approaching misfortunes of the illustrious novelist 
seem to have thrown a shade of gloom over the work which its 
very merits only render more painful to the reader. This con- 
trast of tone is the more perceptible, as Scott's view of life and 
mankind is in general cheerful and genial. The story is of a 
deeply painful and tragic kind, and throughout the work we are 
haunted with the presentiment of ill, hopeless, inevitable, rendered 
the more insupportable by the meanness, the frivolity, and the 
baseness of the majority of the persons. This same mournful 
presentiment of impending fate forms in ' The Bride of Lammer- 
nioor' the great charm — the awful fascination of the work ; but 
there it is unmingled with contempt for the personages: it is ren- 
dered solemn, dignified by distance; here it is vulgarised by the 
general tone of the dramalis personx, and we feel the pang of 
sorrow without the dignity which can half console us. Touch- 
wood, however, is a spirited sketch of a character which Scott 
had not before attempted to portray ; and Meg Dods, the old inn- 
keeper, is a delineation in his happiest vein. 

In 1824 appeared ' Redgauntlet,' a novel in which (though 
the story is somewhat confused and imperfect) we find some 
admirable studies of character, and some scenes delineated with 
extraordinary power. Fairford, the old Scottish lawyer, is ex- 
quisitely real, and it is more than probable that it is a portrait of 
Scott's own father; many of the legal scenes and personages are 
doubtless reminiscences of the author's own personal experience, 
and Peter Peebles and his trial are as fine as anything in Fiehling. 
We have always considered, too, that Nanty Ewart, the smug- 
gling captain in this novel, is a chef-cCceuvre worthy to be placed 
beside Scott's most admirable creations, and the scene in which he 
recounts his early life among the most inimitable passages of fiction. 
Of the art of tale-telling Scott has given in this romance two most 
consummate examples — this story of Nanty Ewart, and the unsur- 
passable ghost-story told by the blind fiddler to Darsie Latimer. 
The two friends are charming and highly-finished delineations ; 
Joshua Geddes, the worthy quaker, is very attractive ; and Thomas 
TurnbuU, the hypocritical smuggler, as superlative as Ewart. 

The next year brought forth the first series of the ' Tales of the 
Crusaders,' containing ' 'i'lie Betrothed' and ' The Talisman.' Of 
these two the first is so much inferior to the other, that we shall 



334 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. nCHAP. XVII. 

pass very rapidly over it ; it contains very few striking scenes, 
and those chiefly of a warlike character: but in 'The Talisman' 
we have one of the finest, most glowing, and most enchanting re- 
vivals of the days of chivalry, vivified by the introduction of splen- 
did historical personages and exploits dear to the national heart. 
It is an episode of the crusade in which the Lion-hearted King 
achieved those exploits which furnished such inexhaustible matter 
to the rhapsodists of the Middle Ages, and associated his fame 
with the fondest recollections of chivalric glory. Into this sea of 
splendid achievement and gorgeous pageantry Scott threw him- 
self with the passion of a Trouvere, with the power of a consum- 
mate artist, and the erudition of an antiquarian. We repeat, with- 
out fear of contradiction, that we know no work so truly Homeric 
in its effect as this. How finely conceived, too, are the female 
characters, Edith and Queen Berengaria ; and what a crowd of 
noble figures are grouped around the heroic person of the king — 
Saladin himself, Philip of France, the wicked Hospitaller, the 
Knight of the Leopard ! We are here in the very midst of medi- 
aeval chivalry ; and, what is more wonderful, we do not regard its 
splendid pageants with mere unlearned and unsympathising curi- 
osity, but the poet's true epic enthusiasm inspires us, in spite of 
ourselves-, with the feelings of contemporaries. 

Scott's ruling passion was for the life of a British country gen- 
tleman. His sweetest reverie was the hope of transmitting to his 
descendants, not only a name famous in Border annals, and glo- 
rified by intellectual triumphs, but a landed estate sufficient to 
support its splendour. To attain this object belaboured with an 
almost superhuman industry ; and the immense revenue which he 
never ceased to derive from his works, he devoted to the purchase 
and augmentation of his landed estate, and to the building of Ab- 
bolsford. Here he transformed a small house, situated on the 
banks of his beloved Tweed, and in the midst of a wild, bare, and 
dreary scenery, into a fairy castle — a " romance in stone and lime." 
The natural dreariness of the scene he remedied by vast plant- 
ings of trees, and on the house and surrounding estate he em- 
ployed not much less than 70,000/. Here he lived, in the true 
splendour of a castellan, and here he delighted to receive, with the 
graceful hospitality he loved to practise, the fair, the noble, and 
the famous, and here he " did the honours for all Scotland." It 
is hardly possible to conceive a higher point of happiness than 
this. In the prime of life, blessed with a promising family to 
continue his name ; loved, venerated, nay, almost adored by his 
dependants, his friends, his countrymen, Europe — the whole 
world ; in the full flush and vigour of his powers, for he never 
relaxed during his whole life his unremitting industry (managing, 
by early rising and regularity, to leave his days free for society) ; 



CHAP. XVll.] SCOTt's misfortunes WOODSTOCK. 335 

this surprising man had not only conferred upon the profession 
of letters a splendour which it had never before known — he must 
be held to have attained as near felicity as humanity could aspire. 
But the blight was already at work at this noble tree; the worm 
was gnawing at its core; it was soon to fall prostrate, with all its 
honours thick upon it, and give the world at once a memorable 
example of the instability of human things, and a most touching 
proof of fortitude and greatness of mind. Scott's earlier works 
had been published by his friend John Ballantyne, and the secret 
of their authorship had been preserved with a constant and sur- 
prising fidelity : but in an evil hour the novelist entered into a 
kind of concealed partnership with him ; and the commercial dis- 
tresses of 1826 involved the firm in the failure of Constable and 
other great publishing speculators. Some idea of this tremendous 
crisis may be formed when we state that Scott's liabilities were 
not under 117,000/. From this consequence of unfortunate spe- 
culation Scott might have in a great measure escaped by taking 
advantage of the indulgence of the English law, but, with more 
than the spirit of chivalry, this great man conceived the colossal 
project of paying off with his pen this huge mountain of del)t. 
This incredible plan he conceived, and, what is more, almost 
executed ! But he perished in the effort : he kept unstained the 
ancestral honour of his house, and unspotted the pure glory of his 
name, but he burst his mighty heart in the unequal struggle. On 
learning the full extent of his frightful losses he immediately aban- 
doned the rural splendour which he adorned, shut himself up in 
an humble lodging in Edinburgh, and set valorously to his huge 
task. In six years it was almost accomplished — in six years he 
had produced new and hardly less splendid works than the long 
bright series we have been examining; but Scott himself — the 
martyr of his commercial integrity — was dying in exhaustion, in 
delirium, and disease. Perhaps the annals of literature do not 
present so sublime and so touching a fact as this : it is a fact which 
has a peculiar significancy to an Englishman, as it is a noble in- 
stance of that chivalrous delicacy of commerce to which our coun- 
try owes a mercantile grandeur, power and supremacy, as peculiar 
and as unrivalled as the wisdom of her senates or the glory of her 
arms. 

The historical tale of ' Woodstock' was the first result of his 
indomitable energy in resisting this great disaster: it was pub- 
lished in 1826. Its subject embraces some of the most exciting 
episodes of the civil war, and the characters of Cromwell and of 
Charles II. figure in many of its finest scenes. But the gem of 
the book is the noble old cavalier. Sir Henry Lee of Ditchley, 
one of the most complete and touching embodiments of highborn 
loyalty that ever was conceived. The tale is full of movement, 



336 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVII. 

variety, and picturesqueness, and the minor personages too are 
stamped with strong vitality ; Wildrake, the three Commissioners, 
Jocelyn JoUiffe, Cromwell's canting bnt resistless soldiers — all, 
even down to Bevis the majestic stag-hound, are such figures as 
no author but Scott could have drawn. Indeed, we may mention 
here that a peculiar love for dogs was one principal mark by 
which these wonderful novels were ascribed to him, long before 
the confession of the great man identified beyond all dispute the 
author of ' Waverley' with Walter Scott. There are very few 
of this admirable series of works which do not contain some ex- 
quisite portrait of a dog. Who can forget Bevis (in this novel) — 
that truly comic and attractive generation of Mustards and Pep- 
pers which the mere mention of Dandle Dinmont conjures up in 
our minds — or the noble Roswal, lying wounded beside the ban- 
ner of St. George — ay, or even Wolf, the ragged attendant of 
Gurth the swineherd? Scott enters into the personality of the 
dog character — his affection, his courage, even his humours and 
caprices. This is no weak indication of a great and noble heart. 
The escape of the King in Woodstock, the ineffectual search of 
Cromwell for the royal fugitive, and, above all, the deeply touch- 
ing concluding scene, the good old knight's euthanasia at the 
triumphal moment of the Restoration — all these are in Scott's 
very finest manner. It was at this period that the great poet 
threw aside the mask of incognito : at a public dinner at Edin- 
burgh Scott claimed the authorship of all these admirable fictions, 
which had, however, almost from the first, been universally at- 
tributed to him on the simple ground that nobody else could have 
been the author, and no less from a vast mass of internal evidence 
distinctly pointing at him as the only man whose nation, genius, 
profession, tastes, and even prejudices, perfectly coincided with 
the general character of the works. 

In 1827 appeared the ' History of Napoleon' — a work of vigour 
and liveliness, but written too near the gigantic events which it 
commemorated, and too much tinged with the strong national and 
political prejudices of the author, to be permanenUy valuable. 
Scott's strong Tory and legitimist principles, and his attachment 
to the English Episcopal Church, rendered him incapable of 
justly appreciating the greatest fact of modern history' — the French 
Revolution — and, consequently, of judging fairly (conscientiously 
as he strove to do so) of the political and legislative character of 
Bonaparte; and it was hardly to be expected that an enthusiastic 
patriot in England, at the very moment of his country's triumph, 
could hold with a steady hand the balance of historical impar- 
tiality. 

In the following year appeared the two series of the ' Chro- 
nicles of the Canongate,' the first containing ' The Highland 



CHAP. XVII.] SCOTT : HIS DEATH. 337 

Widow,' ' The Two Drovers,' and 'The Surgeon's Daughter;' 
i and the second the single novel, ' The Fair Maid of Perth.' The 
, fiction which serves as introduction to this collection is written 
: with great acuteness and knowledge of life, but is tinged with 
sometliing of that desponding tone which we olijected against 
'St. Ronan's Well.' Of tJie tales, the two first, though exceed- 
' ingly slight, are powerful and pathetic; but the third, particularly 
the scenes in India, exhibits a marked want of vividness and con- 
densation. In 'The Fair Maid of Perth' this glorious lamp of 
■ genius and wisdom seems to give a dying and convulsive flash; 
; for, in spite of a very perceptible languor in the narrative, some 
i of the scenes (as the battle between the Clan Chattan and the 
: Clan Quhele) are delineated with strong touches of the old min- 
: strel fire; and the character of the smith, Henry of the Wynd, is 
I worthy of his most glorious days. What is general in the above 
I remarks may be applied also to ' Anne of Geierstein,' published 
' in 1829, though the work met with a more satisfactory success 
I from the circumstance of the scene being a new and hitherto un- 
I trodden one, Switzerland. 'Anne of Geierstein' is closely his- 
I torical in its tone; and the episode concluding with the execution 
I of Pierre de Hagenbach, the tyrannic governor of La Ferette, is 
i vigorous and striking. The Swiss deputies, particularly the noble 
old Landammon, are contrasted with strong dramatic power to the 
splendid and haughty Charles; the scene of the reception of the 
embassy is very fine; though there is in this novel nothing 
approaching in tragic pathos and majestic intensity of feeling to 
the death of Lady Witherington in ' The Surgeon's Daughter.' 
The Alpine storm with which 'Anne of Geierstein' opens is 
grand and poetical ; and the character of the good but childish 
King Rene is very exquisitely drawn. 

The last fictions of this wonderful writer were ' Castle Dan- 
gerous' and 'Count Robert of Paris;' the former a chivalric 
episode in the Border wars, and the latter a scene from Byzantine 
history. Both works, though received by the public with grateful 
indulgence, present melancholy evidence that the gigantic task 
undertaken by Scott was too Herculean even for his untiring 
' energy and heroic courage. A first stroke of paralysis in 1830 
was unable to arrest his industry; but a second, in 1831, rendered 
it necessary for his family to divert him from the incessant lite- 
rary labour which his mind, though now ruined, still continued 
; to perform. The Government placed at his disposal a ship of 
war; and he visited Malta, Naples (where he resided about four 
months), and ultimately Rome. Through these fair regions was 
carried this venerable and illustrious wreck, and he was brought 
home to die. He lingered on some little time at Abbotsford, 
helpless, unconscious and patient ; his mind wandering to his pro- 
29 



338 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [^CHAP. XVII. 

fessional employment, and sometimes to that princely hospitality 
he so nobly exercised, listening to passages from the Bible and 
his favourite poet Crabbe, but never once referring to those mag- 
niticent monuments of genius by which he had immortalised his 
country and glorified humanity itself, " About half-past one 
p. M.," says Mr. Lockhart, his son-in-law and biographer, " on 
the 21st of September, 1832, Sir Walter breathed his last, in the 
presence of all his children. It was a beautiful day — so warm 
that every window was wide open — and so perfectly still that 
the sound of all others most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple 
of the Tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt 
around the bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes." 

His miscellaneous works are exceedingly numerous and valu- 
able. The 'Tales of a Grandfather,' remarkable episodes of- 
Scottish history related for children, is perhaps one of the most 
admirable books for the very young that was ever composed, and 
may be read with delight at any age. The 'Lives of the Novel- 
ists,' and his innumerable contributions to the 'Edinburgh Re- 
view' and other critical journals, are rich, genial, and full of .a 
fine spirit of learning and wisdom: their only defect is their too 
universally laudatory tone; for Scott, who never had an enemy, 
seems incapable of saying a harsh thing. No man — and cer- 
tainly no literary man — ever passed so long and so illustrious a 
life without a single personal enmity. His character was as 
amiable, generous, manly, and social, as his genius was varied 
and sublime. 

The life of Robert Southey, extending from 1774 to 1843, was 
a rare instance of unremitting literary activity; and the immense 
collection of miscellaneous works which he left behind iiim is 
highly honourable to his learning and his talents, though it is 
only as a prose writer that he is likely to descend to posterity. 
He began life as a violent partisan of the principles of the French 
Revolution ; and in his earlier works — the ridiculous drama of 
'Wat Tyler,' and the extravagant and tedious epic, 'Joan of 
Arc' — he devotes all his powers to the support of extreme liberal 
opinions. He soon, however, abandoned his early principles 
and became one of the most thoroughgoing supporters of mo- 
narchical and conservative doctrines; was named, in 1813, lau- 
reate, and exhibited in the maintenance of his new political creed 
as much fervour, virulence, unscrupulousness, and, it is but just 
to say, sincerity also, as he had shown for the Utopian theories of 
a republican millennium. To give some idea of the uncompro- 
mising and extreme character of his political predilections, we 
need only mention that in ' Joan of Arc' he has painted as the 
blackest of tyrants our heroic sovereign Henry V., and placed the 
Emperor Titus among the "murderers of mankind," while, in 



CHAP. XVII.] SOUTHEY: THALABA KEHAMA. 339 

the latter stage of his political transformation, he has raised the 
more than almost morbid obstinacy of George III. to the honours 
of an absolute canonisation I 

In 1801 was published 'Thalaba,' and in 1810 the 'Curse of 
Kehama,' two works of a narrative character, which have many 
points of resemblance. They are both, in their subject, wild, 
extravagant, unearthly, full of supernatural machinery, but of a 
kind as difficult to manage with effect as at first sight splendid and 
attractive. ' Thalaba' is a tale of Arabian enchantment, full of 
magicians, dragons, hippogriffs, and monsters. In 'Kehama' the 
poet has selected for his groundwork the still more unmanageable 
mythology of the Hindoos — a vast, incoherent, and clumsy struc- 
ture of superstition, more hopelessly unadapled to the purposes 
of poetry than even the Fetishism of the savages of Africa. The 
poems are written in an irregular and wandering species of rhythm 
' — the 'Thalaba' altogether without rhyme; and the language 
abounds in an affected simplicity and perpetual obtrusion of vul- 
gar and puerile phraseology. The works have a most painful air 
of laxity and want of intellectual bone and muscle. There are 
many passages of gorgeous description, and many proofs of pow- 
erful fancy and imagination; but the persons and adventures are 
so supernatural, so completely out of the circle of human sympa- 
thies both in their triumphs and sufferings, and they are so scru- 
pulously divested of all the passions and circumstances of human- 
ity, that these gorgeous and ambitious works produce on us the 
impression of a splendid but unsubstantial nightmare : they are 
xgri somnia, the vast disjointed visions of fever and delirium. 
In 'Thalaba' we have a series of adventures, encountered by an 
Arabian hero, who fights with demons and enchanters, and finally 
overthrows the dominion of the powers of Evil in the Domdaniel 
cavern, " under the roots of the ocean." It is more extravagant 
than anything in the ' Thousand and One Nights ;' indeed, it is 
nothing but a quintessence of all the puerile and monstrous fictions 
of Arabian fancy. In the Oriental legends these extravagances 
are pardonable, and even characteristic, for in them we take into 
the account the childish and wonder-loving character of the audi- 
ence to which such fantastic inventions were addressed, and we 
remember that they are scattered, in the books of the East, over a 
much greater surface, so to say, whereas here we have them all 
consolidated into one mass of incoherent monstrosity. We miss, 
too, the exquisite glimpses afforded us by those tales in the com- 
mon and domestic life of the East. 'Kehama' is founded upon 
one of the most monstrous superstitions of the Hindoo belief, viz. 
that a man, by persisting in an almost incredible succession of 
voluntary penances and self-torture, can acquire control over the 
divinities themselves: and in this poem a wicked enchanter goes 



340 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVII. 

near to overthrow the dominion of Brahma, Vishnoo, and Seeva. 
The poem is full of demons, goblins, terrific sacrifices, and pic- 
tures of supernatural existence ; and the slender thread of human 
(or half-human) interest is too feeble to unite them into a whole. 
These poems, like everything of Southey's, exhibit an incredible 
amount of multifarious learning ; but it is learning generally rather 
curious than valuable, and it is not vivified by any truly genial, 
harmonising power of originality. 

In the interval between the publication of these poems appeared 
a volume of metrical tales and the historical epic of Madoc' In 
the tales, as in general in his minor poems, Southey exhibits a 
degree of vigour and originality of thought for which we look in 
vain in his longer works. Some of his legends, translated from 
the Spanish and Portuguese (in which languages Southey was a 
proficient), or from the obscurer stores of the Latin chronicles of 
the Middle Ages, or the monkish legends of the saints, are very 
vigorous and characteristically written. The author's spirit was 
strongly legendary ; and he has caught the true accent, not of he- 
roic and chivalric tradition, but of the religious enthusiasm of 
monastic times : and some of his minor original poems have great 
tenderness and simple dignity of thought, though often injured by 
a studied meanness and creepingness of expression ; for the fatal 
error of the school to which he belonged was a theory that the 
real everyday phraseology of the common people was better 
adapted to the purposes of poetry than the language of cultivated 
and educated men ; and thus the writers of this class often labour 
as industriously to acquire the language of the workshop and the 
nursery as the poets of Louis XIV. after an artificial dignity and 
elevation. 

' Madoc' is founded on one of the most absurd legends con- 
nected with the early history of America. Madoc is a Welsh 
prince of the twelfth century, who is represented as making the 
discovery of the Western world ; and his contests with the Mexi- 
cans, and ultimate conversion of that people from their cruel idola- 
try, form the main action of tbe poem, which, like 'Joan of Arc,' 
is written in blank verse. The poet thus had at his disposal the 
rich store of picturesque scenery, manners, and wonderful adven- 
ture to be found in the Spanish narratives of the exploits of 
Columbus, Pizarro, Cortes, and the Conquestadors. But the 
victories which are so wonderful when related as gained over the 
Mexicans by the comparatively well-armed Spaniards of the fif- 
teenth and sixteenth centuries, are perfectly incredible when 
attributed to a band of savages little superior in civilization and 
the art of war to the people they invaded. Though the poem is 
crowded with scenes of more than possible splendour, of more 
than human cruelty, courage, and superstition, the eflect is singu- 



CHAP. XVII 



1 SOrXHEY: RODERICK. 341 



larly languid ; and the exaggeration of prowess and suffering pro- 
duces the same effect upon the mind as the extravagance of fiction 
in the two Oriental poems. There is nothing that requires so 
firm and steady a hand to manage as the extraordinary ; the 
modesty of nature, the boundary of the possible, once over- 
stepped, the reader's curiosity grows more insatiable as it is more 
liberally fed. When we have had a giant twenty feet high, we 
require one of sixty ; if the hero conquers a dragon which vomits 
poison, we soon want him to overthrow a monster which belches 
fire; and so on in an infinite series, till all is extravagance, mon- 
strosity, and childish gaping folly. 

' Kehama' was followed, at an interval of four years, by ' Rode- 
rick, the Last of the Goths,' a poem in blank verse, and of a 
much more modest and credible character than its predecessors. 
The subject is the punishment and repentance of the last Gothic 
king of Spain, whose vices, oppressions, and in particular an in- 
sult offered to the virtue of Florinda, daughter of Count Julian, 
incited that noble to betray his country to the Moors. The gene- 
ral insurrection of the Spaniards against their Moslem oppressors, 
the exploits of the illustrious Peiayo, and the reappearance of 
Roderick at the great battle which put an end to the infidel do- 
minion, form the materials of the action. The king, in the dis- 
guise of a hermit, figures in most of the scenes ; and his agonizing 
repentance for his past crimes, and humble trust in the mercy of 
God, is the keynote or prevailing tone of the work. Though 
free from the injudicious employment of supernatural machinery, 
and though containing some descriptions of undeniable merit, and 
several scenes of powerful tenderness and pathos, there is the 
same want of reality and human interest which characterises 
Southey's poems in general, and the tone is too uniformly ecstatic 
and agonizing. His personages, like his scenes, have something 
unreal, phantomlike, dreamy: diey are often beautiful, but it is 
the beauty not of the earth, or even of the clouds, but of the mi- 
ra8;e and the Fata Morgana. His robe of inspiration sils grace- 
fully and mnjestically upon him, but it is too voluminous in its 
folds, and too heavy in its gorgeous texture, for the motion of real 
existence : he is never " succinct for speed," and his flowing dra- 
pery obstructs and embarrasses his steps. He has power, but 
not force — his genius is rather passive than active. 

On being appointed poet laureate he paid his tribute of court 
adulation with an eagerness and regularity which showed how 
complete was his conversion from the political faith of his youth- 
ful days. A convert is generally a fanatic ; and Southey's laure- 
ate odes exhibit a fierce, passionate, controversial hatred of his 
former liberal opinions which gives interest even to the ambitious 
monotony, the convulsive mediocrity of his official lyrics. In 

29* 



343 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVII. 

one of them, the ' Vision of Judgment,' he has essayed to revive 
the hexameter iti English verse. This experiment, tried in so 
many languages, and with such indifferent success, had been at- 
tempted by Gabriel Harvey in the reign of Elizabeth, and the 
universal ridicule which hailed Southey's attempt was excited 
quite as much by the absurdity of the metre as by the extrava- 
gant flattery of the poem itself. The deification, or rather beati- 
fication, of George III. drew from Byron some of the severest 
strokes of his irresistible ridicule, and gave him the opportunity 
of severely revenging upon Southey some of the latter's attacks 
upon his principles and poetry. 

Southey was a man of indefatigable industry; his prose works 
are very numerous and valuable for their learning and sincerity, 
but the little 'Life of Nelson,' written to furnish young seamen 
with a simple narrative of the exploits of England's greatest na- 
val hero, has perhaps never been equalled for the perfection of its 
style. In his other works — the principal of which are ' The 
Book of the Church,' 'The Lives of the British Admirals,' that 
of Wesley, a ' History of Brazil,' and of the Peninsular War — 
we find the same admirable art of clear vigorous English, and no 
less that strong prejudice, violent political and literary partiality, 
and a tone of haughty, acrimonious, arrogant self-confidence, 
which so much detract from his many excellent qualities as a 
writer and a man, his sincerity, his learning, his conscientious- 
ness, and his natural benevolence of character. 

In his innumerable critical and historical essays, chiefly con- 
tributed to the ' Quarterly Review,' in the ' Colloquies' (a book 
of imaginary conversations composed on a most absurd plan), and 
in the strange miscellaneous work entitled ' The Doctor,' we see 
a gross ignorance of the commonest principles of political and 
economic science, and an arrogant, dictatorial, persecuting tone, 
which render these works melancholy examples of the truth that 
intolerance is not always naturally associated with weakness of 
intellect or with malignity of heart. 



QHAP. XVIII.] MOORE, BYRON, AND SHELLEY. 343 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

MOORE, BY'RON, AND SHELLEY. 

Moore: Translation of Anacreon, and Little's Poems — Political Satires — The 
Fudge Family — Irish Melodies — Lalla Rookh — Epicurean — Biographies. 
Pyron : Hours of Idleness, and English Bards — Romantic Poems — The 
Dramas — Childe Harold — Don Juan — Death of Byron. Shelley: Poems and 
Philosophy — Queen Mab, Prometheus Unbound, Alastor, Stc. — The Cenci — 
Minor Poems and Lyrics. 

We have seen how the name of Walter Scott was the type, 
sign, or measure of the first step in literature towards romanticism, 
or rather of the first step made in modern timesyrom classicism 
—from the regular, the correct, the established. 

The next step in this new career was made by Thomas Moore, 
who broke up new and fresh fountains of original life, first in the 
inexhaustible East, and secondly in his native Ireland. In the 
former field, indeed, it may be thought that he was perhaps an- 
ticipated by Southey, so many of whose poems are on Oriental 
subjects; but these two poets are sufficiently dissimilar to absolve 
the author of ' Lalla Rookh' from the charge of servilely copy- 
ing, or, indeed, of following, the writer of ' Thalaba' and 'Ke- 
hama;' in the latter and more valuable quality of a national Irish 
lyrist, he stands absolutely alone and unapproachable. 

Thomas Moore, the Anacreon and Catullus, perhaps in some 
sense the Petronius and the Apuleius also, of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, was born in Dublin in the year 1780. Belonging essen- 
tially to the middle class, and a Roman Catholic besides, it may 
be easily conceived how he must have sympathised in the deep 
discontent which pervaded his country at that agitated period. 
Moore passed some time at the university of his native city, and 
soon after gave proof that he had made a more than ordinary 
progress in at least the elegant department of classical scholar- 
ship. His first work was a translation into English verse of the 
' Odes' of Anacreon, in which he exhibits a very great extent of 
reading, and no mean proficiency in Greek philology. The 
translation, however, is much more valuable as giving us an 
earnest of the poet's future powers than as a faithful reproduction 
of the original: it is more interesting as Moore than as Anacreon : 
it is Irish rather than Greek. 

Canova is said to have exhibited his Venus in a sort of close 



344 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVIII. 

recess, surrounded by crimson drapery, and lighted by a single 
lamp ; he is even said to have slightly tinged the marble with a 
faint rosy glow; and this is what Moore has done to Anacreon. 
He has diffused over his version a rapturous and passionate air 
not in harmony with the unadorned simplicity of the Greek; he 
is fanciful where the original is sensuous. The reputation, both 
as poet and as scholar, which Moore acquired by his Anacreon, 
combined with his musical and conversational talents, immedi- 
ately introduced him to the refined and intellectual society then 
assembled round the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV.; 
for the heir apparent had surrounded himself (as naturally hap- 
pens in a constitutional monarchy) with a strong phalanx of oppo- 
sition wits and statesmen, and Charles Fox and Sheridan arrayed 
themselves with the Prince and against the existing government 
of the King. 

In 1803 Moore received an appointment in the island of Ber- 
muda, which he not long afterwards lost through the malversa- 
tion of a person employed under him, whose dishonesty exposed 
Moore to the prosecution of the government, and involved him in 
difficulties from which he did not easily extricate himself. During 
his absence from England, both in the beautiful Antilles and his 
subsequent retirement at Paris, he continued to be an industrious 
author. We must mention a small volume of ' Odes and Epistles,' 
written in singularly easy and graceful language, with very little 
pretension to elaborate finish (he calls them himself " prose 
tagged with rhyme"), but exhibiting the dawning of those powers 
which were to render him unequalled in a peculiar and very 
difficult line. The other production of this period was a small 
collection of poems, almost all of an erotic character, and some 
translated from Catullus, and other poets, Greek and Latin, of 
the same class. This volume was published under the pseudonym 
of "Thomas Little," and the merit of its contents, though occa- 
sionally great, was not sufficient to counterbalance the sensual 
and immoral tone of many of the pieces. In this respect ' Little's 
Poems' are indeed open to very severe reprehension, and, without 
affecting any Pharisaical degree of moral severity, we may affirm 
that they have really done a great deal of harm. 

He now commenced a long series of political satires — light ar- 
rows of ridicule aimed against men and measures, generally only 
of a temporary interest, but so sharply pointed with wit, so lightly 
feathered with grace and apropos, that these slight shafts will re- 
tain to remote posterity very high value as perfect masterpieces of 
their kind. Moore did for the political "squib" what H. B. has 
done for the political caricature — " he deprived it of half its evil by 
depriving it of all its grossness." The , Chinese are said to ex- 
hibit fireworks of exquisite brilliancy and ingenuity so contrived 



CHAP. XVIII.] MOORE : THE FUDGE FAMILY. 345 

that they can be let off in a room, not only without danger of fire, 
but with the peculiarity that in exploding they emit a fragrant 
odour. These light productions of Moore are like the Chinese 
fireworks: they are wonderfully varied, petulant, and sparkling; 
and instead of the heavy vapours of personal malignity, they 
spread around, after crackling and flashing through their moment- 
ary existence, a fragrance of good taste, good humour, and classic 
grace. Though they must have given, as we know they did, the 
most exquisite pain to their unfortunate victims, they are abso- 
lutely the most unanswerable and galling attacks that were ever 
made ; and the only way to conceal the wound must have been 
by joining in the laugh. They are full of the most happy turns 
of ingenuity, of the gay exhaustless fancy which seems the pecu- 
liar heritage of the Irish intellect, and they show a vast extent of 
curious and out-of-tlfe-way reading, which no man ever knew bet- 
ter to employ than Moore. 

Among the best of Moore's comic compositions are the admi- 
rable letters entitled ' The Fudge Family in Paris,' supposed to be 
written by a party of English travellers at the French capital. It 
is composed of a hack-writer and spy, devoted to legitimacy, the 
Bourbons, and Lord Castlereagh; his son, a young dandy of the 
first water; and his daughter, a sentimental damsel, rapturously 
fond of " romance and high bonnets and Madame Le Roy," in love 
with a Parisian linendraper, whom she has mistaken for one of 
the Bourbons in disguise. In this, as in his other comic produc- 
tions, Moore shows great skill in introducing his own witty fancies 
without destroying the probability of the character who is made 
the unconscious mouthpiece for the author's good things. We 
ought not to forget O'Connor, the tutor and "poor relation" of 
this egregious family, who is an ardent Bonapartist and Irish pa- 
triot. His letters are all serious, and contain violent declamations 
against the Holy Alliance, the British government, &c. ; but they 
are not in harmony with the gay and ludicrous tone of the work 
— to whicli they were probably intended to act as a foil or relief. 

Another delightful collection of (pretended intercepted) letters, 
supposed to be from eminent persons, is entitled ' The Twopenny 
Post-Bag.' These, like the preceding, had a most unparalleled 
success. Before quitting this category of Moore's multifarious 
writings, we will mention his 'Rhymes on Cash, Corn, and Catho- 
lics,' the subject of which is sufiiciendy indicated by the title ; 
his ' Fables for the Holy Alliance,' a most spirited and ludicrous 
mockery of the legitimist doctrines ; and a number of political 
squibs written in the slang or argot of the prizefighters. These 
offer a new proof of the elegance and versatility of Moore's ta- 
lents; for though in them he has adopted a dialect associated with 
the lowest and most brutalising of our national sports, he has han- 



346 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVIII. 

died it so that it is not only not offensive, but in tlie highest degree 
comic. Moore has used the jargon of the prize-ring so as to lose 
all its coarseness, and retain only its oddity and picturesque force. 
The narrative of the great fight between "Long Sandy and Georgy 
the Porpus" is in true sporting style, and 'Tom Cribb's Memorial 
to Congress' contains passages of true poetic spirit. 

We now approach those works upon which will be founded this 
poet's widest and most enduring reputation — these are the 'Irish 
Melodies.' They are short lyrics, written to suit that vast trea- 
sury of beautiful national airs which form the peculiar pride, joy, 
and consolation of the Irish people. " The task which you pro- 
pose to me," says the poet, in his letter to Sir John Stevenson, the 
arranger of the music, " of adapting words to these airs, is by no 
means easy. The poet who would follow the various sentiments 
which they express must feel and understand that rapid fluctuation 
of spirits, that unaccountable mixture of gloom and levity, which 
composes the character of my countrymen, and has deeply tinged 
their music. Even in their liveliest strains we find some melan- 
choly note intrude — some minor third, or flat seventh — which 
throws its shade as it passes, and makes even mirth interesting." 
We have in another place spoken of the Scottish national airs in 
terms of admiration which will appear exaggerated to those only 
who are unacquainted with them: the popular airs of Ireland are 
inferior to those of Scotland neither in pathos, in gaiety, nor in in- 
exhaustible variety. In Ireland the national music had been as- 
sociated with coarse, rude, and mean words, often indecent and 
trivial in the highest degree ; and thus by degrees many most beau- 
tiful airs, naturally expressive of the tenderest emotion, were de- 
prived, by changes in their time, their key, and their accentuation, 
of their natural sense and meaning. When we see, among the 
titles b)^ which the airs are known, such gross and vulgar appella- 
tions (generally worthy specimens of the pot-house compositions 
of which they are the beginning) as 'Paddy Snap,' 'The Black 
Joke,' 'The Captivating Youth,' 'Bob and Joan,' ' Paddy Whack,' 
' The Dandy O,' and the like, we shall pardy appreciate the ser- 
vice rendered by Moore to the music and poetry of his country. 

The 'Irish Melodies,' as songs, have never been surpassed in 
their particular kind. The versification is so exquisite, and exe- 
cuted with such delicacy of rhythm, that, on hearing them well 
read, we involuntarily and certainly conceive the tune, even 
though we may never have heard it. 

Viewed as poetry, these songs are among the most beautiful 
productions of literature. The diction is invariably perfect for 
elegance, neatness, and grace: it is truly Catullian, ^^ simplex 
inunditiis :'''' the words are never too big for the thought. They 
exhibit marks, not so much of labour and effort as of polish and 



CHAP. XVIII.] MOORE : LALLA ROOKH. 347 

care; and where the author can prevail upon himself to resist his 
natural and Irish tendency to say something ingenious and con- 
ceited, their sentiment is as true and beautiful as their execution 
is felicitous. The great art in song-writing is to invent something 
that is original without being far-fetched; and when we reflect 
upon the difficulty of finding untouched and unhackneyed ideas 
on the few topics offered by patriotism, love, and pleasure (which 
compose nearly the whole curta siipellex of the song- writer), we 
shall the more easily excuse Moore for having sometimes fallen 
into the fantastic and epigrammatic. 

If we compare Moore, as a lyric poet, with Burns, we shall 
acquire a much more elevated idea of the Irishman than by look- 
ing at him in a distinct point of view. The peasant poet of Scot- 
laud had the advantage of using a dialect which was simple and 
rustic without vulgarity, and all his finest compositions (with 
perhaps one or two remarkable exceptions) are written in that 
dialect; and it is difficult for a critic not practically acquainted 
with that dialect, to judge how far its use may have contributed 
to give Burns's poetry its charm of naivete, slyness, and pathos. 
Moore has not this advantage : his lyrics are models of the most 
refined and classical English. Both poets abound in beautiful 
love-passages ; but the passion of the Scottish ploughman is rather 
too ardent and unscrupulous, while that of the Irish poet is often 
frittered away in cold and sparkling concetti, and thus loses in 
depth and tenderness more than it gains in ingenuity and ele- 
gance. 

In 1817 Moore published the celebrated Oriental romance 
'Lalla Rookh' (Tulip-Cheek, so entitled from the name of the 
heroine). The structure of this work is truly original ; it con- 
sists of a little romantic love-story, in which the beautiful daughter 
of Aurungzebe, during her journey into Bucharia, where she is to 
meet her betrothed husband, the prince of that country, falls in 
love with a young minstrel, who afterwards turns out to be her 
affianced bridegroom in disguise, and who thus, " having won her 
love as an humble minstrel, now amply deserved to enjoy it as a 
king." This slender plot is related in that ingenious and spark- 
ling prose of which Moore is a consummate master; and nothing 
can exceed the gorgeousness, splendour, and pleasantry with 
which he describes all the details of Oriental life and scenery dur- 
ing the journey, and the inimitable character of Fadladeen the 
high chamberlain, a pedantic critic and accomplished courtier. 
This prose narrative, which, though very short, is one unceasing 
sparkle of brilliant antithesis and Eastern imagery, forms a kind 
of framing (like the prologues of Chaucer) for the poems. These 
are four in number, ' The Veiled Prophet,' ' The Fireworship- 
pers,' 'Paradise and the Peri,' and 'The Light of the Harem;' 



348 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. LcHAP. XVIII. 

and are supposed to be sung for the Princess's amusement by the 
disguised Feramorz. Of the prose portion of this enchanting 
work it is impossible to speak too highly: it is the very quintes- 
sence, the '''' fine flcur ^'' the bloom and anthos of the gorgeous and 
voluptuous genius of the East: indeed its only fault is that it is 
too incessantly, too fatiguingly dazzling and splendid ; it is "more 
Eastern than the East itself," and is a concentration or condensa- 
tion of a thousand traits and strokes derived from a vast extent of 
Oriental reading. Jekyll said that "it vi'as as good as riding on 
the back of a camel." The tales themselves are of various merit: 
'The Veiled Prophet,' the most ambitious and the longest, does 
not appear to us the most successful. The narrative wants clear- 
ness, consistency, and event: the march of the story languishes, 
and the characters are too conventional and undefined to possess 
much power of interest. It is written in rhymed couplets, and 
there is far too incessant a profusion of ornament, which, though 
rich and appropriate, is so thickly sown that the effect of the 
whole is like that of some Oriental robe, in which the whole tex- 
ture is concealed with an unbroken surface of pearl, and ruby, and 
diamond. 

' The Fireworshippers,' which is M'ritten in irregular octo- 
syllabic verses, is less oppressive in its splendour, but it reminds 
the reader and unfortunately for its success, of the minor Oriental 
narratives of Byron, as, for example, ' The Bride of Abydos.' 
On the whole, our favourite of the four poems is ' The Light of 
the Harem :' the subject is a love-quarrel and reconciliation be- 
tween the Emperor Jehanghir and his beautiful favourite Nour- 
mahal. In all these poems the songs introduced, and the lyric 
passages in general, are inexpressibly beautiful : those sung by 
the fair houris in the artificial Paradise, where Azim is tempted 
to join the standard of Mokanna ; many of the lyric movements 
in ' The Peri ;' and, above all, the delicious incantations in ' The 
Light of the Harem,' are in Moore's very finest manner, .and 
perhaps have never been equalled, except by himself in the 'Irish 
Melodies.' 

Of ' The Loves of the Angels,' Moore's other Oriental poem, 
we have but very few words to say : it is generally found to be 
inferior to his other works ; and though many passages of it 
breathe a rich and graceful perfume of passion, it is in characters 
and scenery too modern, so to say, too little imbued with a 
primeval spirit appropriate to the legend, and the personages 
have lost the pure and celestial lineaments of the angelic nature, 
without acquiring our sympathy in their punishment as men. 
How would Milton have maintained the solemn, etherial, prim- 
eval character of those primeval days of Earth's first infancy, 
" vi^hen men began to multiply on the face thereof, and daughters 



CHAP. XVIII.] THE EPICUREAN BYRON. 349 

were born unto ihem, and the sons of God saw the daughters of 
men that they Avere fair, and took them wives of all which they 
choose!" Moore's anwels do not so much resemble the angels of 
the Bible, or those of Raphael, nor even those of Albert DLirer, as 
the Scripture personages of a ballet at the Porte St. Martin : and 
indeed it is curious enough that this poem was composed at Paris. 

The remarks we have matle on the ' Irish Melodies' will equally 

apply, though of course not always in the same degree, to various 

I other collections of songs which this poet has given to the world: 

there are many beautiful productions among his ' National Songs,' 

written for a selection of airs of all countries ; and the ' Evenings 

in Greece,' and other similar works, may be examined by tlie 

reader with a certainty of finding many gems of grace, tenderness, 

and harmony. We have now to say a few words of Moore as a 

prose-writer. He has distinguished himself both in fiction and 

in biography — in the former as the author of the beautiful tale of 

I ' The Epicurean,' and in the latter in a variety of works, of which 

I the most important are the 'Lives' of Lord Byron, his intimate 

friend and brother-poet, and of his illustrious countryman Sheridan, 

the British Beaumarchais. 

I 'The Epicurean' is a tale of antique manners, the scene being 
jlaid among the primitive Christians, chiefly in Egypt, and termi- 
nating with the martyrdom of a converted priestess, whose clia- 
racter, as well as that of the hero, a j'oung Athenian, is beauti- 
fully sketched. The book contains many striking and poetical 
episodes, particularly a descent into the subterraneous temples of 
the Egyptian deities, and a revelation of the arts by which the 
■ pagan hierarchy deceived the candidates for initiation in their un- 
holy mysteries. The night voyage on the Nile is also powerful 
and picturesque, and the style of the work, though still sufficiently 
gorgeous and fanciful, is not so overloaded with ornament and 
iconceils as the prose parts of ' Lalla Kookh.' It also exhibits a 
profusion of curious erudition. 

The two 'Lives' which we have mentioned are written on that 
plan which is immeasurably the best for this kind of work. 
They are not ' Lives,' but ' Memoirs :' the author allows the sub- 
ject of the biograpliy to tell liis own story ; and the mass of the 
book consists of extracts from the journals and correspondence 
of the person whose life we are reading. Moore lias performed 
his task with the penetration of the critic, and witli the gentleness 
and enthusiasm of the friend : and nothing in it is more admirable 
1han the warm and generous justice rendered to Byron by a con- 
temporary and most popular poet, and the total absence of any- 
thing like jealousy or envy. 

j It is impossible not to confess that Byron was the most extra- 
jordinary man of his age, and perhaps the most extraordinary 
' 30 



i 



350 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVIII. 

person in the modern history of Europe. Striking and not unin- 
structive parallels have been drawn between him and Napoleon, 
and even between him and Goethe. All three were eminently 
the embodiment of the period of crisis, literary or political, 
which characterised their age. No sooner is Napoleon installed 
in the Tuileries than he begins to revive all the ceremonies and 
exploded offices of the ancient court of France; and, by what 
would seem (but only to a superficial glance) a similar caprice, 
Byron, " the young Napoleon of the realms of rhyme," has no 
sooner mounted with the step of a giant to the uncontested throne 
of his country's literature, than his first manifestos proclaim his 
adherence to those canons of taste and principles of criticism, 
the total and unsparing annihilation of which was the particular 
mission of his power. Though the greatest of the romanticists, 
Byron incessantly insisted on the superiority of the classicist 
school; and, whether from blindness, or from that perverse con- 
tempt for received opinions which so strongly coloured his cha- 
racter, the author of ' Childe Harold' and ' Lara' affected to con- 
sider Pope as his superior in poetry. " It was all Virgil then," 
says he; "it is all Claudian with us now:" and he has com- 
pared the two classes of literature respectively to a Grecian tem- 
ple, and to a glittering but barbarous pagoda. He affected to be 
prouder of his cold and formal 'Imitations of Horace' than of those 
immortal poems by which he revolutionised the taste of Europe. 
This extraordinary man was born in London on the 22d of 
January, 1788. His mother was a Scottish heiress, who had in 
an evil hour married a ruined profligate, from whom she had soon 
been obliged to separate ; and the early days of the young poet 
were passed chiefly in Scotland, amid the miseries of poverty and 
neglect, and exposed to all the dangers arising from the almost in- 
sane character of his unhappy mother — capricious alternations of 
frantic fondness and unreasoning rage. He was eleven years old 
when the death of his grand-uncle put him in possession of the 
title, and made him the representative of one of the most ancient 
Norman houses of the English aristocracy. The hereditary 
estate, Newstead Abbey, not far from Nottingham, was situated 
in the middle of the most beautiful rural scenery, in a district 
dignified by the legends of " Robin Hood and Little John" and 
the fair Forest of Sherwood ; but the property was dilapidated by 
the follies and vices of his ancestors. However favourable may 
have been all these circumstances to foster that union of passion 
and sensibility which composes the poetical character, and to in- 
spire and develop that mixture of pride, melancholy, and haughty 
repining which characterises the poetry of this great man, they 
were indubitably not favourable either to his happiness or to his 
virtue. An early and ill-requited passion came, too, to throw an 



CHAP. XVIII.3 BYRON : ENGLISH BARDS. 351 

additional tint of gloom over this lofty and mournful heart ; and 
his boyish love for Mary Chaworth was afterwards to be immor- 
talised in verses whose sad and imperishable beauty only renders 
their sincerity too painfully apparent. 

His prospects in life being considerably improved by his acces- 
sion to the peerage, young Byron passed some time at Harrow 
School, where he made himself chiefly remarkable by the intens- 
ity and almost feminine fervour of his schoolboy friendships; 
and afterwards at Trinity College, Cambridge, where the tradition 
goes that he occupied the same rooms as had been formerly in- 
habited by Newton. At the university his life was neither very 
happy nor very moral, but both here and at Harrow he continued 
to indulge the same voracious appetite for all manner of miscel- 
laneous reading which had distinguished him almost from his 
infancy. It is singular enough that his predilections should have 
lain, in a great measure, in the department of Oriental history. 
Of classical learning, at least of an accurate and technical kind, he 
never possessed a great share ; and he has left us, in many pas- 
sages of his works, strong indications of the weariness and dis- 
gust with which a bad system of education had associated, in his 
mind, the finest passages of ancient literature. 

It was in 1807 that Byron first appeared before the public as 
an author. The 'Hours of Idleness,' a small volume of fugitive 
poems, of no intrinsic value whatever, and (what is singular 
enough) giving no indication of his future powers or style of 
thought, was treated with extreme severity in a memorable cri- 
ticism of the ' Edinburgh Review.' Byron's rage at this con- 
temptuous and sarcastic article, and the terrific revenge which he 
afterwards took, have induced many people to consider this famous 
criticism as a notable instance either of malignity or ignorance. 
But it seems to us that this is an error and an injustice. The 
criticism in itself, though not perhaps written in the best possible 
taste, is fair and reasonable enough ; for the poems are exceed- 
ingly weak and commonplace. The true culpability of the re- 
viewer lies in the selection, for a subject of his strictures, of a 
work so trifling and unimportant. The critique threw Byron into 
a passion of rage and indignation, and he shortly afterwards 
printed his satire of ' English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' a 
fierce and indiscriminate piece of retaliation, in which he revenges 
his self-love upon nearly the whole of the literary men of that 
day. This poem, as might have been expected from the sincere 
anger which dictated it, is in many parts very powerfully written, 
and exhibits, if not a complete foretaste oi all the qualities which 
distinguish his peculiar genius, at least the earnestness, intensity, 
and admirable clearness of expression, which form chief elements 
in his future productions. It is equally to the honour of the 



352 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [ciIAP. XVIII. 

satirist and his victims in this ebullition of youthful indignation, 
that he afterwards became the warm friend and correspondent of 
many of the persons whom he had attacked — of Jeffrey, for ex- 
ample (editor of the obnoxious Review), of Scott, of Moore, and 
many others. 

After inflicting this fierce vengeance the poet travelled for two 
years, and embodied, in the first and second cantos of ' Childe 
Harold,' which appeared on his return in 1812, the impressions 
of beauty, tenderness, and sublimity which the scenes of Spain 
and Greece were so likely to make upon such a mind. The 
appearance of this admirable poem placed the author, instantly 
and for ever, at the head of all the poets of his time. The re- 
mainder of 'Childe Harold' appeared at considerable intervals; 
the fourth (and last) canto not until 1818. For this reason we 
think it advisable to defer our remarks upon this work till we can 
discuss the whole of it at once. The first and second cantos 
were followed in rapid and brilliant succession by those inimitable 
romantic narratives which form an era in literature, and which 
proved that Byron's genius had now found a new and vast source 
of passion, interest, and sentiment. This source was principally 
the East, and modern Greece in particular. Familiarised as we 
now are, and chiefly familiarised by the genius of Byron himself, 
with the scenery and costume of this region, we can hardly form 
an idea of the impression which must have been made by the 
first appearance of 'The Giaour' and 'The Bride of Abydos,' 
'The Corsair' and 'Lara;' they produced in the public of Eng- 
land, and indirectly throughout Europe, an enthusiasm which was 
little short of madness. That deep and spiritual perception of 
beauty, that mixture of pride and tenderness, of fervour and volup- 
tuous softness, the rapid alternation of the fiercest energy with 
the loftiest and most pathetic meditation — all these made Byron 
as peculiarly tlie poet of Greece, as they rendered Greece the 
just patrimony of Byron's genius. Most of these narrative poems 
were written in the irregular-rhymed metres which Scott had 
brought into fashion. They have rarely any pretensions to inge- 
nuity of plot or connected development of incitlent; and are, in- 
deed, little else than powerful embodiments of terrible situations 
— culminating instants — in Oriental existence. They are not, in 
short, dramas, nor hardly scenes, of the life of man: they are 
moments of intense and tremendous passion. They have no 
variety of character: they contain but two figures, sometimes 
slightly relieved against a few conventional and monotonous cha- 
racters, but rendered invariably impressive and affecting by the 
scenery and circumstances which surround them, and by the un- 
equalled intensity, directness, and pathos with which their pas- 
sions are set before us. The male character is the same as we 



CHAP. XVIII.] BYRON : ROMANTIC POEMS. 353 

behold in Childe Harold, in Conrad, in Lara, in Alp, and even 
in the tragedies — a character unnatural, impossible, and incon- 
sistent in itself, but painted with a terrible force and distinctness. 
Both Scott and Byron excel in description ; but with this differ- 
ence, that Scott contents himself with the external manifestation 
of the object, whose most picturesque and striking lines he selects 
and reproduces with an admirable energy and vividness ; or, if 
these are allowed to acquire any colouring from the poet's mind, 
that tint is seldom of any unusual or profound character. No 
passions, indeed, can be said to colour Scott's descriptions, ex- 
cept occasionally the enthusiasm of chivalric daring, the glow of 
patriotic exultation, or the tenderness of the domestic affections. 
Byron is the exact reverse of all this. Not only is every mani- 
festation of his sublime genius intimately and inseparately con- 
nected with the peculiar moral constitution of the individual, but 
the very existence of that genius can only be conceived as insepa- 
rable from that constitution. In him it is not possible to separate 
the artist from the man. The fact is, that the character of Byron 
is intensity ; that is to say, intense earnestness and sincerity : and 
this quality is so rare in art or in literature, that we are content 
to purchase it even at the price of monotony. In the infancy of 
society — that is, at periods of great physical agitation — poetry, 
like art, preserves its external or superficial character: it speaks 
to the eye, and to the imagination. But as man, or as mankind, 
grows older, and he " puts away childish things," he turns his 
eye inward upon the mysterious workings of his own moral na- 
ture, and poetry becomes searching, analytic, deeply passionate. 
Byron's writings are, in this point of view, as complete a mani- 
festation of the nineteenth century, as the ' Iliad' and the ' Odyssey' 
are of the heroic, or as Scott's poems are a revival of the chivalric 
age. It is singular how almost all Byron's human characters re- 
solve themselves into moments and situations of intense but sta- 
tionary interest. Alp gazing on the cloud, whose passage is to 
decide his everlasting fate ; Lara smiling sadly at the dancers ; 
Manfred drinking in the loveliness of nature, which can, how- 
ever, bring no consolation to his despair — these are delineations 
which will occur to every one; and the narrative or dialogue in 
which these conceptions are introduced is of the same stationary, 
unprogressive character: there is no evolution, nothing advances. 
'The Corsair' and 'Lara' are two prominent adventures in the 
life of the same person ; for it is evident that Lara and the page 
Kaled can be no other than Conrad and Gulnare. These two 
poems are remarkable as being written in the rhymed heroic 
couplet of Pope and Dryden, instead of the irregular lyric mea- 
sures of the other romantic tales. Byron has handled the difficult 
instrument with perfect mastery. In the former of the two poems, 

30* 



354 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. CcHAP. XVIII. 

the song of the pirates is inexpressibly vigorous, and full of wild, 
savage energy ; but the analysis of Conrad's character is gene- 
rally considered as the finest passage, and the death of Medora as 
an unequalled instance of Byron's power 

"To ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears." 

No author ever possessed so little of the dramatic power — of that 
going out of one's self to create — of that faculty of getting entirely 
rid of one's own idiosyncrasy, which Shakspeare possessed to a 
degree in no sense short of supernatural. In fact, it is to this 
concentration of thoughts in himself, to the very incapacity of 
going out of the circle of his own moral being, that Byron owes 
his specific character as a poet. 

It was this portion of Byron's life which we might call the hap- 
piest, if glory and pleasure were enough to make life happy. He 
was now the idol of society, considered "facile princeps" of the 
living poets of his country, and boldly compared even with the 
greatest names among the mighty dead ; and about this time he 
contracted his marriage with Miss Milbanke. The tale of this 
truly melancholy episode is soon told : after living a short time 
with his lady, between whom and her illustrious husband there 
seems to have existed no disagreements not to be explained by 
the very embarrassed stale of their fortune, the relations, and par- 
ticularly the mother, of Lady Byron, appear to have induced her 
to separate from her husband, not only (as far as appears) without 
assigning any sufficient cause, but without communicating to Byron 
himself any plausible pretext; for he solemnly affirmed, until his 
d^'ing day, that he never knew the cause of separation. He soon 
hurried away once more from England, with the hope of forget- 
ting or alleviating his pain amid the loveliness of foreign climes, 
and in those beautiful regions immortalised by ancient glor}^ but 
to which his genius had given a new enchantment. But, before 
his departure, he gave to the world 'The Siege of Corinth' and 
'Parisina,' — short, wild, irregular poems, in which his character- 
istic merits are splendidly perceptible. In the former, the ap- 
parition which visits Alp with a last chance of salvation is a 
scene nobly contrasted with the warlike fury of the storming of 
the devoted city ; and in the second, pathos of the deepest and 
most hopeless kind is embodied in descriptions and reflection so 
exquisitely touching that we forget the horror of crime and ven- 
geance shed over the meagre story, and feel no want of that strong 
picturesque situation in which this poet's romantic tales are rarely 
deficient. The opening lines of ' Parisina' are consummate in deep 
internal beauty, and are worthy of being compared even with the 
ghost scene of the siege, or the inimitable attack and capture of 
Corinth by the Turks. 



CHAP. XVIII.3 BYRON : MANFRED. 355 

The restless pang of misery which was now fixed forever to 
this noble heart again drove him abroad,, In six months he sent 
to England the third canto of ' Childe Harold,' and the exquisite 
little poem of ' The Prisoner of Chillon.' Respecting the latter 
of these, we need not make any very detailed remarks. Story or 
dramatic interest it has none, but the effect of grief and imprison- 
ment upon the characters of the three brothers is painted with a 
variety of touch as strong as it is delicate, and the death of the 
youngest is a haunting image of quiet, patient, uncomplaining 
hopelessness. We behold the captives, we see " the iron entering 
into their souls ;" and the feverish and fantastic imaginings of the 
survivor, his reflections on his brother's grave, and his welcoming 
of the bird which comes to visit him, are deeply-imagined indica- 
tions of that weakening and revulsion of the mind which follow 
hopeless and irremediable sorrow — the recoil of the o'erstrained 
spring. The view of happy nature without is exquisitely relieved 
and contrasted against the cold dull monotony of the prison, and 
is like a little glimpse of blue sky framed by the grating of a dun- 
geon. 

It was about this period of his career (1817) that Byron began 
to write dramas ; and the first work of this nature, and probably 
the best also, was, as might have been expected, but little removed 
in form from the contemplative poems which had gained him his 
greatest fame. This was the drama of ' Manfred.' Byron's 
genius was singularly ill adapted for scenic writing, principally 
from that want of variety with which we have reproached all his 
attempts at the creation of character. ' Manfred' is no more 
a play for the stage than 'Faust,' and the author has repeatedly 
insisted that this (and many other of his dramas) were never com- 
posed " with the remotest view to representation." The truth is, 
that this work is dramatic only in form ; there are no events, pro- 
perly so called, there are no characters, and there is no dialogue. 
The so-called play, in short, is little else than a series of grand 
and majestic soliloquies, and the form of dialogue is only assumed 
to enable the author to put into the mouth of a few other persons 
(who have nothing whatever distinctive and characteristic) remarks 
which give Manfred the occasion of describing and re-clescribing 
his own sublime agonies. The work, therefore, is much less a 
drama than the ' Prometheus' of iEschylus, and litde more so 
than the ' Paradise Lost.' It bears a strong superficial resem- 
blance in many points to the ' Faust,' but a very slight examina- 
tion will show the dilTerence between these two awful productions. 
' Faust' is a cold, cynical, cruel, deliberate anatomy of the vanities 
of human virtue and knowledge ; the hero is little more than inert 
matter in the hands of the sneering fiend, who plays with him as 
a juggler with his balls. Mephistophiles is the real hero of the 
poem, as Satan is of the ' Paradise Lost ;' Faust is but the weak 



356 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. CcHAP. XVIII. 

and erring Adam of his vain Eden of human perfectibility. But 
Manfred is a haughty and regal spirit, whose tremendous agonies 
have endowed him with power over the powers of Nature, Des- 
tiny, and Ahrimanes. The abstract and unworldly features of this 
awful conception are softened and humanised by his deep and un- 
failing love for nature and his longing remembrances of the earthly 
passion of his youth. The character resembles those Alpine 
solitudes amid which he utters his sublime woes; it is the cold 
and glittering unfruitful glacier, bordered with the mournful flowers 
of the mountain rhododendron ; it is the icy peak, thunder-shat- 
tered and inaccessible, but glowing in the rosy hues of Love's de- 
parted sun. All the soliloquies in this immortal work are full of 
the rarest beauty ; that spoken on the summit of the Jungfrau, the 
evocation of the Witch of the Alps, and that grand and pathetic 
passage in which the mind of the lofty victim, now calmed by the 
hope of approaching death, recalls the majestic sadness of ruined 
Rome. The songs of the Spirits are indescribably beautiful as 
lyrics; and in one overwhelming scene (that in which the phantom of 
the dead Astarte is called up to answer Manfred before the throne 
of Ahriman) it cannot be denied that Byron has shown a power 
almost dramatic. 

This splendid work appeared with ' The Lament of Tasso,' 
and was followed in the succeeding year by the fourth and con- 
cluding canto of ' Childe Harold,' about which poem we shall 
now say a {ew words. In selecting as the medium of a contem- 
plative and descriptive work the nine-lined stanza of Spenser 
(itself a modification of the ottava rima of Tasso and Ariosto), 
Byron at first determined to convey something of that quaint 
and antiquated air which his great master had adopted in ' The 
Faerie Queene.' This suits well enough with Spenser's subject, 
a tale of romantic chivalrous adventure ; but even in ' The Faerie 
Queene' the use of old and obsolete language was carried rather 
too far. Byron attempted (it is not very easy to say with what 
object) to do the same ; the very title of the poem — ' Childe' 
signifying, in our old English legendary language, knight — is a 
proof and example of this. But we feel neither surprise nor 
regret that he soon abandoned this forced masquerade of diction. 
* Childe Harold' derives its wonderful power over our sympathies 
from the admirable variety, splendour, and beauty of its descrip- 
tions of scenery, spots of eternal and historical interest, and the 
great triumphs of human art and genius. These have no natural 
coherence or connection, and are only united into one complete 
whole by the grand tone of mournful reflection in which the im- 
pressions are embodied, the atmosphere of lofty sadness through 
which the various objects are viewed. Harold is an exhausted 
and disappointed libertine, who wanders over the earth, beholding 



CHAP. XVIIl.] BYRON : CIIILDE HAROLD BEPPO. 357 

its fairest and most exhilarating scenes with the cahn and ab- 
stracted glance of one who no longer either hopes or fears, but 
who is sometimes capable of being roused for a moment by con- 
tempt or admiration, by the base or the beautiful, by patriotism, 
by despair. Neither tlie English nor assuredly any other litera- 
ture had produced any passages of description at all comparable 
to the pictures of nature, man, and society which crowd these 
four wondrous cantos — the plaintive loveliness of Greece; the 
stern splendour of Mussulman dominion ; the scenes of heroic 
struggling for Spanish and Portuguese independence ; the cataracts 
and pealvs of Switzerland ; the phantom splendours of Venice ; 
and all the wonders of antique and mediaeval art. It is of course 
impossible for the reader, in spite of Byron's eager and reiterated 
disclamations, to avoid identifying the hero of this great work 
with the personal and individual character of its author. The 
bitter and scornful declamations against military glory and intel- 
lectual supremacy, the invectives against the hollowness of modern 
society, do indeed sometimes wear a somewat suspicious air not 
only of sophistry, but of affectation; but it is to the eternal ho- 
nour of this great genius that his enthusiasm for what is really 
good, noble, or beautiful, is always stamped with an air of deep 
and fervent sincerity. The mask is that of Mephistophiles, but 
the features which it conceals are the lineaments of an archangel. 
The poem begins and ends with the ocean ; to whose majestic 
undulations, to whose changing aspects of gloom and sunshine, 
of calm and tempest, of melancholy grandeur and immeasurable 
depth, it bears no faint similitude, and of whose many-voiced 
harmonies its varied music is no unworthy echo. 

Together with the fourth canto of ' Childe Harold' appeared 
'Beppo,' a light, half-playful, half-sarcastic tale of modern Italian 
society, in which Byron gave the first earnest of his powers as a 
comic writer. It is composed in the easy stanza employed by 
Pulci and the more ludicrous Italian poets, and is a consummate 
example of easy familiar grace, occasionally rising into pathos 
and tenderness. The story is as trifling as possible, being a not 
very moral carnival adventure ; but what an abundant and trans- 
parent flow of refined chat and badinage, with only just that slight 
touch of satire and pathos which sufhces to give it pungency ! 
The somewhat lax morality we pardon with a smile, by attributing 
it to the custom of Venetian society ; and we no more think of 
directing the artillery of moral declamation against the lady and 
her dilettante cicisbeo, than of levelling a cannon against a pair 
of sporting butterflies. 

For a considerable time, and with various intervals of travelling, 
even down to 1821, Byron resided in Italy, principally at Venice 
and Ravenna, steadily and uninterruptedly adding stone after stone 



358 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. |^CHAP. XVIII. 

to that pyramid of glory in which he has eternised his name. His 
private life, during the whole latter part of his career, was neither 
very moral nor very regular. Driven from his own country by 
his embarrassed circumstances, endowed with even more than the 
poet's impressibility and passion, this great man plunged into a 
life of dissipation neither dignified in itself, nor even excusable 
by the lax tone of Italian manners at that time. His productions, 
however, continued to be poured forth with as much variety, 
splendour, and effect as ever, though one particular department 
of them (the tragedies) were rather striking, bold, and original in 
their manner, than in perfect harmony with the peculiar style 
which had acquired him such fame. 

The first work of this epoch which we shall mention is the 
tale of ' Mazeppa,' full of vigour, passion the more impressive 
from its air of being bridled in and restrained, and rough rapid 
descriptions of suffering, terror, and revenge. The mise en scene 
of this narrative is admirable: it is a story of his early days told 
by the fierce and rugged veteran to amuse Charles XH. at a 
bivouac after the dreadful defeat of Poltava: and the character of 
the rude old hetman (who, however, in no way resembles the 
real historical Mazepa) is in perfect harmony with the scene, the 
circumstances, and the savage nature of his youthful adventures. 

The tragedies are six in number, and can be divided into two 
categories — first, those of a purely abstract and imaginary kind ; 
and, secondly, the dramas more strictly historical : the former 
class may be considered as productions of the same phase in the 
poet's intellectual life which produced 'Manfredj' and the latter 
to have been written under the combined influence of Alfieri and 
Shelley. In the one class are placed ' Cain,' ' Heaven and Earth,' 
and ' The Deformed Transformed ;' in the other, ' Marino Fa- 
liero,' ' Sardanapalus,' ' Werner,' and ' The Two Foscari.' Of 
the first-mentioned three, ' Cain' is undoubtedly the finest, whether 
we consider the tremendous boldness of the sentiments, the pic- 
tures of primeval existence, now awful and now exquisitely lovely, 
which it contains, or the tremendous agencies which are embodied 
in its personages. It is little else than a fearful piece of special 
pleading, in which the goodness of God is brought into question: 
but if we examine the finest (and consequently most dangerous) 
dialogues in which this terrific thesis is argued between Cain and 
Lucifer, we shall discover that there is no real dialogue, and that 
the majestic speeches are nothing else but monologues in reality, 
and all tending to the same result. The argument against Divine 
goodness is really an argument in which the speakers are both on 
the same side. But the glimpses of primeval life which we get 
through the clouds and darkness, of Cain's haughty scepticism, 
the picture of little Enoch's sleeping infancy, and the gloomy 



CHAP. XVni.3 BYRON : MAZEPPA DRAMAS. 359 

grandeur of those tremendous phantoms which Lucifer shows to 
his questioner in the realms of space peopled with the ghosts of 
premundane existences — all these are in the loftiest vein of con- 
ception, though their merit is far more lyrical than dramatic : 
perhaps the only really dramatic passage in the mystery is the 
last line, in which Cain, with a short, simple, and terrific excla- 
mation of remorse and despair, is sent forth to wander miserable 
and restless over the world. ' Heaven and Earth' is altogether 
lyric, and is much feebler than either ' Cain' or ' Manfred :' it 
seems to us a not very happy imitation of Shelley's abstract and 
cloudy manner, but without his exquisite diction, imagery, and 
unequalled melody of versification. In ' The Deformed Trans- 
formed' Byron has given a bitter and savage expression to his 
recollections of his own deformity and unhappy childhood. There 
is much satire and invective too, in the drama, on the 'folly of 
mankind, and on the atrocious puerilities of military glory: but 
the only passage which remains in the reader's memory is the 
evocation of the forms of the beautiful and wise of the antique 
world, when the stranger offers to the Deformed the choice of a 
new body. 

The more purely historical dramas are undoubtedly fine and 
dignified compositions, on the model, not of Shakspeare but of 
Alfieri. Between Byron and the great modern reformer of Italian 
literature there were innumerable points of resemblance, both 
moral and intellectual ; and those classical tendencies of Byron's 
mind to which we have alluded some pages back, doubtless received 
new food from the strong admiration he felt for the fiery, haughty, 
sublime author of ' Filippo.' We doubt whether Byron ever felt 
a very warm or sincere sympathy with Shakspeare, as a dramatic 
artist; there ever lurked in his mind a sort of suspicion that 
the unaffected and irregular richness of the Elizabethan stage was 
rather a defect than a merit — that its admirable ease, grace, viva- 
city, and nature, could not compensate for the stern dignity of 
classical tragedy ; and perhaps a consciousness, too, of his own 
want of flexibility and animation of dialogue, and of variety and 
naturalness in the conception of characters, made him voluntarily 
adopt those severe and rigid forms which might palliate or con- 
ceal those defects. Thus his self-love, as an author, was masked 
under a natural or affected preference of those models which alone 
he could hope to imitate. This was natural enough, and there- 
fore our wisest proceeding is to admire the beauties of his tra- 
gedies, with their monotony of style, their languid march of in- 
cident, and their repetition of a few types of character, their 
unities and their gravity, without making any invidious compari- 
sons between their somewhat formal grandeur and the inexhaust- 
ible glories of our elder drama. The man of true taste is always 



3G0 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVIII. 

catholic in his admirations — lie can find intense pleasure in the 
regal gardens of Versailles without losing his relish for the dewy 
glades of a primeval forest. 

In 'Marino Faliero' the principal defect is the insufficiency of 
such an event as the supposed insult offered by Steno to the Doge 
to excite in such a mitid as that of the heroic veteran the tempest 
of passion which agitates his soul from tlie first act to the last. 
The passion is also somewhat monotonous in itself, and Faliero 
is too often lashed into wrath rather by his own eloquence than 
by the suggestions or provocations from without. This will be 
proved by comparing the character with Othello or with Lear. 
The conversations between the fierce old Doge and his young 
wife, though languid, are very beautiful; and the conspiracy- 
scene is a fine specimen of declamation— but declamation is rather 
the vice than the beauty of the French and Italian drama; and 
even the noble energy and force of such passages as the famous 
curse with which the Doge takes leave of life and Venice bear 
too strongly impressed this air of rhetoric, not passion. The 
description of the ball, by the senator Lioni, is exquisitely luxu- 
riant, but totally out of place in a tragedy ; there is nothing scenic 
in this play but the scene in which the illustrious conspirator is 
awaiting the sound of the great bell of St. Mark which is to give 
the signal for the massacre. In this the interest is really worked 
up to a breathless intensity of expectation. 

On the stage the most successful of Byron's tragedies are ' Sar- 
danapalus' and ' Werner ;' but the latter derives all its eflect from 
the interest of the plot, and the uncertainty, so artfully kept up, 
as to the real assassin of Strahlenheim. The language is through- 
out little better than dull prose. In fact this play is nothing else 
but the admirable prose narrative in Miss Lee's ' Canterbury 
Tales,' entitled 'The Hungarian's Story,' arranged into acts and 
scenes, and clumsily cut up into phrases of equal length, by court- 
esy called verse. ' Sardanapalus' has much higher merit: the 
character of Myrrha, the Ionian slave, is exquisitely and tenderly 
touched ; and though Sardanapalus himself, with his luxurious 
good-natured efleminacy, and his moments of heroic courage and 
careless energy, is little else but an expansion of the antithesis of 
the historian and the satirist, he is striking and interesting on the 
stage. 

Of ' The Two Foscari' we have only to remark the monstrous 
improbability of the sentiment which is the root of the action — 
the frantic and unreasonable love of country in Jacopo which 
drags him back from exile to die by lingering torture in ungrate- 
ful Venice. But nevertheless it is impossible not to sympathise 
with the despair and agony of the Doge, and our heart, though 
not our reason, takes part in his sorrow when the desolate old 



CHAP. XVIII.H BYRON : DON JUAN. 361 

man, the victim of the implacable revenge of Loredano, throws 
himself to die upon the corpse of his unhappy son. 

In all these tragedies, though none of them are unadorned with 
some noble and majestic declamatory passages, or with some de- 
scription executed with Byron's never-failing intense and inward 
sentiment of beauty, the general run of the dialogue is singularly 
prosaic and sober. We perpetually meet with" long passages of 
the plainest prose, and the line freqtiendy ends with of, to, ivith, 
or some such wretched monosyllable, while the sense is so often 
carried, without any pause, into the next line, that it is only when 
we read that we can perceive it to be intended for metre. This, in 
a versifier so consummate as Byron was when he pleased, is a great 
blemish, and shows how little he had studied the admirable class 
of dramatists whose external forms he imitated in these plays. 
Corneille and Racine might have tauglit him, and Altieri too, that 
the highest severity was not incompatible with the most finished 
and elaborate versification. 

We have now only to speak of that extraordinary poem which 
is the most complete embodiment of all the varied discordant 
elements of this wonderful genius; nay, which is a lull expres- 
sion or reflection of the age in which he lived. In ' Don Juan,' 
as in a mirror, we see imaged all the features of modern society, 
its earnestness and its mockery, its scepticism and its faith, its 
sublimity and its meanness. The prevailing vice of our age — the 
haunting demon — is cant: and of cant Byron was the most im- 
placable, active and unresting enemy: cant in all its myriad dis- 
guises — the cant of religion, the cant of morality, the cant of 
patriotism, the cant of literature — it was his chief aim and pas- 
sion to attack and to overthrow. The first five cantos of the 
poem were written at Venice and Ravenna, and ten more were 
gradually added, chiefly at Pisa. The work is absolutely without 
plot or intrigue : it is a ' Gil Bias' in easy verse — a series of va- 
ried and almost unconnected adventures, Don Juan is a young 
Spanish grandee, whose early education is described with touches 
of the sharpest and most resisdess satire. These keen razor- 
strokes, thougli bearing reference to the hollow hypocrisy and 
Turtuffcrie of our age, are frequently directed specially against 
Lady Byron and her family, and never did genius take a more 
terrible revenge for real or imaginary wrong. The young Don 
engages in an amour with a married woman somewhat older than 
himself, and is obliged to leave Spain. The ship founders at sea, 
and, after dreadful sufferings, the hero is tlirown half-drowned and 
starving on a litUe island in the iE^ean, where he is succoured bv 
Haidt'e, a Greek girl — one of Byron's sweetest conceptions. In 
the midst of the wedding festivities, Lambro, the father of Haidee, 
a pirate, suddenly returns ; Juan is disarmed and put on board his 
31 



362 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [[cHAP. XVIII. 

vessel, and carried to Constantinople, where he is sold for a slave, 
and is bought by Gulbeyaz, the haughty and voluptuous favourite 
of the Sultan. After some admirable but rather warmly-coloured 
scenes in the seraglio, Juan escapes, and we find him, with John- 
son, an Englisliman who had been the companion of his captivity, 
arriving at the Russian camp before Izmail, just as Suvorofl* comes 
to take command of the besiegers ; and we have a most vivid and 
terrific description of the storming of that devoted place. Juan 
afterwards passes some time at the court of Catherine II., by 
whom lie is sent on a secret diplomatic mission to England. We 
then have some most severe and lively descriptions of English 
society, in which all its weak and rotten points are anatomised 
with merciless severity ; and we at last accompany the hero to a 
villeggiatura, or summer-party, at a great country-house (a noble 
descripiion of Newstead Abbey is introduced here), and we are 
admitted into the very focus of aristocratic life. Just as we are 
about to meet with what promises to be a. piquant adventure the 
poem abruptly concludes. 

The primary characteristic of this extraordinary creation is a 
rapid and incessant alternation of the severest satire and the gayest 
and most comic impressions with images the most solemn or pa- 
thetic. The artifice of the poet consists in passing, without a 
moment's preparation, without any intermediate state of transition, 
from the loftiest to the humblest images, from the most refined to 
the most vulgar, from the bitterest sneer to the tenderest enthusi- 
asm, from the grin of Mephistophiles to the agonised gaze of the 
Niobe. The critics have all complained of this, but we think 
without reason, for it is in this that consists the poem : — 

" Aliter non fit, Avite, liber." 

It is undeniably true that this close apposition of the ridiculous 
and the sublime, of the beautiful and the hideous, gives an air of 
heartless mockery to the satire, and of insincerity to the tender- 
ness ; but we must remember that such apposition and inconsist- 
ency are the very type of our modern society : the moral of the 
work lies deeper than the surface, and we must not apply to this , 
vast structure of irony and sadness (a sadness deeper for the 
irony) the mere rules of literary criticism : if we complain, it < 
should not be of the mocking spirit of the poem, but of the 1 
hypocrisy, cant, and hoUowness of the age. 

It is written in a kind of easy ottava rima, as admirably suited 
to the purpose as the Spenserian harmonies of ' Childe Harold' 
are to the subject and character of that splendid work; and it is 
a curious and instructive proof of Byron's admirable skill and 
exquisite ear, that in two poems so different in tone he should 
have used a metre nearly alike in form, but so admirably varied 



CHAP. XVIII.] BYRON : DON JUAN. 363 

in feeling and rhythm, that the effect is perfect in each case. In 
' Don Juan' we have the perfection of easy, familiar, lively con- 
versation ; the English is as pure and idiomatic as is conceivable 
—the style, transparency itself. Of humour this wonderful poem 
contains no trace, but it is throughout sparkling with an exhaust- 
less current of wit — wit of the cold and caustic character of 
Beaumarchais and Voltaire. Modern Europe, after the frenzy of 
war and revolution, feels the collapse, the exhaustion, and the 
weariness, which are the natural consequence and reaction of 
violent excitement — the headache and nausea which follow the 
debauch, the cold shuddering indifference which succeeds to the 
paroxysm of sensuality. Modern society has acquired a smooth 
varnish of civilized propriety, and the satire of Byron, like a 
concentrated acid, burned off and ate away this superficial polish, 
showing the weak and cracked places concealed beneath. Of the 
richness, abundance, and intensity of the wit in this poem, there 
can be but one opinion ; the absence of humour is, we think, as 
evident. All his satire is caustic — all is negative, not reconstruct- 
ive : in the loftiest, the holiest, the tenderest emotions of the 
mind he shows us a selfish and contemptible ingredient. Such 
an element there assuredly is in all human feelings ; for man is a 
composite and complicated being, and the taint of self defiles his 
most elevated sentiments. 

" Quidquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas, 
Gaudia, discursus, nostri est farrago libelli." 

The secret of the power of this astonishing work is, as we have 
said before, the incredible facility willi which the poet passes 
from the most tender or exalted feeling to tiie bitterest and most 
sneering mockery. The sarcasm is only the more intense from 
being uttered with a graceful smile and with the epigrammatic 
polish of refined society. But perpetually as the mocker is at our 
side, pouring into our ear, with the smooth voice of Mephistophi- 
les, the heart-hardening sophistries and the heart-piercing verities 
of artificial life, the poet is never absent either ; it is impossible to 
surpass those delineations (so numerous and so beautiful) of the 
lovely and terrible scenes of nature, of the intoxication of youth- 
ful love, and the splendid gallantries of courts and camps. What 
truly poetical figures in Haidee, in Gulbeyaz, in Aurora Raby, in 
Lambro, in Donna Inez, in Julia! The picture of the festivities 
in the Pirate's Isle of the iEgean, and the inopportune return of 
Lambro, is superlatively rich and vivid, and so is the caustic por- 
traiture of English aristocratic life. 

'Don Juan' is a complete expression of Byron's life and genius ; 
capricious, varied, ranging from cynic mockery to the deepest 
tenderness, it is also a perfect type of the age which produced 



3G4 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVIII. 

it — an age at once sceptical and believing, bold and effeminate, 
shameless and hypocritical, coldly calculating and wildly imagi- 
native ; and it was just that this splendid literary career should 
close with a work which is so full and perfect a type of its marked 
and inconsistent features. 

Among the singular contrasts and inconsistencies which crowd 
the personal and literary portrait of this man, not the least striking 
are those of his political existence. Born and bred an aristocrat, 
and exhibiting a tenacity of the prejudices of rank and manners 
even more than usually intense, Byron remained all his life a 
supporter of extreme liberal opinions. The two speeches, neither 
very successful, and exhibiting rather rhetorical than statesman- 
like ability, which he pronounced in the House of Lords, record- 
ed certainly an unequivocal adherence to liberal doctrines ; and 
during his residence in Italy, Byron not only expressed the 
warmest sympathy with the efforts of the Carbonari, but even 
entered into the unfortunate speculation of 'The Liberal,' a 
journal which totally failed. But at the end of his life a noble 
destiny invited him. He determined to take an active part in 
the Greek war of independence, and, after consecrating to a cause 
which must have had for him, as a man, as an Englishman, and 
as a poet, the deepest interest, not only very considerable sums 
of money, but great exertions also, he landed, January 4th, 1824, 
at Missolonghi. Europe has hardly yet recovered from the shock 
of grief and admiration with which she learned that the great 
poet, whose glory had filled so large a space of the social horizon, 
had died (April 19th, 1824), after suffering a short but painful 
illness produced by extreme fatigue and anxiety acting upon a 
mind and body worn out with all kinds of indulgence and emo- 
tions. 

It was a benevolent destiny which ordained that this great man 
should die on those shores which owe half their immortality to 
his genius, and amid a nation whose noble though fallen cha- 
racter he had rendered so interesting. His remains, after being 
conducted to the sea-shore amid the universal lamentations of the 
Greek patriots, were carried to England, and interred in the village 
church of Hucknall, in Nottinghamshire, where many generations 
of his ancestors repose ; and the stupid bigotry which refused his 
bones a place in the national cemetery of Westminster Abbey, 
has not long ago crowned its climax of imbecility by denying 
within the walls of that Pantheon of England's worthies a statue 
to the memory of him who is the chief among her intellectual 
glories in the nineteenth century! 

The genius of Shelley is the most exceptional and abnormal, the 
most difficult to classify, of any of the great poetical manifestations 
of the present age. No author has exerted a more powerful in- 



CHAP. XVni.] SHELLEY C HIS SCHOOL DAYS. 365 

fluence on detached and individual minds : there is none, at least 
of a merit in any way comparable to his, who has exerted so 
litde influence on his tiine. Byron was a consummate artist, 
and always retains a complete consciousness and self-command. 
His muse is a Pythoness, who, in the fiercest moments of posses- 
sion, remembers to sit gracefully on her tripod. Shelley is the 
very reverse of this ; he does not possess his art, but is possessed 
by it — crushed, overpowered, overwhelmed ; and if his works 
never fail to bear a peculiar ineffaceable stamp of ideal grace and 
beauty, this is to be attributed to the innate elegance and purity 
of his mind. His glory has been exposed to a destiny as strange 
and fantastic as his life; his fame has been equally injured by 
uncandid enemies and by injudicious admirers. Shelley's biogra- 
phy can be related in a very few words. In many of its chief 
outlines it bears a striking and melancholy resemblance to the 
story of his immortal friend, but there is a general vein of differ- 
ence pervading even the most similar points in the history of the 
two men. Both were unhappy in their relations with the world, 
and both sought, and found, oblivion of their personal and social 
sufferings in the love of nature and in the unspeakable raptures 
of genial creation. But in Shelley, both the sufferings and the 
alleviation, both the disease and the remedy, were of the moral 
sense ; in Byron, both the one and the other were of the heart. 
Byron was discontented with the world as it is, Shelley was ever 
pining after a world which was not. Both were sprung from 
ancient and noble houses — Shelley was the son of a baronet of 
old family, and born in 1792; they both received a very similar 
education, first at one of the great English public schools, and 
afterwards at the university. From Eton Shelley was removed 
to Oxford, from whence he was expelled for the bold scepticism 
of his youthful poem ' Queen Mab.' But the Harrow boy was 
distinguished among his companions for generous manliness and 
the warmth of his schoolday friendships: the young Etonian, 
delicate and almost feminine in frame and manners, was filled 
with anguish at the foretaste of the world which the republican 
constitution of a great English school offers to the child yet warm 
from the soft existence of home. Shelley left Eton with his mind 
full of terror, disgust, and sensitiveness, and on entering on his Ox- 
ford life plunged ardently into a sea of abstract and physical study. 
The spirit of resistance to authority and dogmatism, so natural to 
a youthful and enthusiastic temperament, and combined with a 
vague course of reading, led him to scepticism, and scepticism to 
atheism — if that system of belief may be called atheism, which, 
while denying the existence of a Divine Being, such as we con- 
ceive the Deity to be, supplies its place by an imaginary existence 
whose qualities and attributes, at least as far as they are not mere 

31* 



366 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XVIII. 

abstractions, correspond exactly with our own conchisions re- 
specting its nature. He published one or two trifling productions, 
apparently intended to brave the University, was expelled from 
Oxford, and soon afterwards renounced, when little past his boy- 
hood, by his family. At eighteen he published the wild and 
fantastic poem ' Queen Mab,' which was at the same time a 
formal exposition of the doctrines he had adopted in religious 
and political philosophy, chiefly consisting of the fallacies and 
paradoxes of the French writers of the eighteenth century. The 
sting of this work lies in the notes, which are, however, little 
more than the often-refuted dreams of the philanthropist human- 
itarian theorists, but the poem contains many passages of that 
peculiar and inimitable melody which forms the great charm of 
Shelley's writings. 

At this period of his life, while yet a mere boy, Shelley mar- 
ried a girl of inferior birth and education, and travelled for some 
time on the continent. His union was unhappy, and, after once 
more returning for some time to England, he was separated from 
his wife. During this short residence in his own country he lived 
principally amid the beautiful scenery of Windsor; and here he 
wrote his poem of ' Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude.' In this 
work, a wild romantic poem, he describes the early fate of a youth, 
whose mind, elevated and purified by a lofty and benevolent phi- 
losophy, pines after communion with a similar spirit, and who 
dies desponding at not finding such a being. The strength of the 
poem consists in the exquisitely rich and ideal descriptions of soli- 
tary woodland scenery, for which Shelley had, indeed, a poet's 
eye. On being separated, by the intervention of the law, from 
his wife, he soon afterwards contracted a second marriage, with 
the daughter of Godwin, a man whose opinions were in many 
respects in harmony with his own ; and retiring to a village in 
Buckinghamshire, produced 'The Revolt of Islam,' a rapturous 
declamatory narrative, exhibiting, under an allegorical form, the 
triumph of his philanthropic theories over the tyranny, hypocrisy, 
and hollowness which he considered inseparable from all the re- 
ligious and political systems adopted by mankind. His health 
was now so weak — his fortune, in spite of the singular simplicity 
of his mode of life, so dilapidated — that he could no longer re- 
main in England. He left his country, in 1818, never to return, 
and went directly to Italy, where he settled in a climate and a 
country much more congenial to his poetical temperament. He 
now produced his drama of ' Prometheus Unbound,' in some 
measure suggested, as far as its pure lyric form and colossal gran- 
deur of outline are concerned, by the 'Prometheus' of iEschylus. 
In spite of the transcendental reveries of modern, and particu- 
larly of German, criticism, which has discovered, in the gigantic 



€HAP. XVIII.3 SHELLEY: PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 3G7 

drama of the Athenian, an allegorical shadowing forth of primeval 
struggles between human will and fate, between the good and evil 
principles of humanity, we are apt to believe that this lyric tra- 
gedy had no such esoteric and mysterious meaning, and that 
iEschylus simply embodied the traditional mythology of his 
country, just as the rude monkish artist revived on his stage the 
events of the Christian history. The transcendental exposition, 
however, was best suited to Shelley's theory and object; and, 
therefore, in his ' Prometheus Unbound' he has essayed to give 
us the complement or companion-picture to the wild and phantas- 
magorial drama of iEschylus. His hero is nothing but a per- 
sonification of man's indomitable resistance to the tyranny of re- 
ligions and governments ; for to religion and government he attri- 
buted all the ills which afflict humanity. It contains passages of 
the sublimest grandeur, and the most wonderful richness of imagi- 
nation ; but the eflect of the whole is so vaporous and unsub- 
stantial, the images which he evokes are so unsolid, that not even 
the unsurpassable purity of the diction, and the unequalled variety 
of the lyric music, can preserve us from weariness and a painful 
sense of dreamy confusion. As to the attacks upon all systems 
of religion, which he calls priestcraft, and all systems of govern- 
ment, which he styles tyranny, it is hardly necessary to refute 
them seriously here. Religion and government, the priest and 
the king, vieived from the point ivhich Shelley has selected, are, 
indeed, open to all the charges he brings against them. But the 
fallacy precisely consists in his taking that point, and arguing ex 
abiisti, the most fatal of all sophistries. It is obvious that false 
religions and bad kings are great evils, but the portion of human 
woe and crime which is produced by the most degrading of super- 
stitions and the cruellest of despots is very far indeed from being 
comparable to the evils traceable to man's own selfishness and 
passions : and another great error of Shelley, and such reasoners, 
is the supposition that religion and kingship are something extra- 
neous, foreign to our nature, and imposed by a superior and in- 
dependent force ; whereas all experience and argument show that 
these institutions, whetlier good or bad, are essentially the expres- 
sion of man's own wants and condition, and are modified, not 
ab extra, but ab intra. 

In Shelley's writings it is very easy to separate the philosophy 
from the poetry ; and the philosophy, though so hostile to exist- 
ing conditions of society, is so free from any moral impurity, so 
ethereal, so imbued with deep love of everything noble and ele- 
vated, and withal so exceedingly abstract and impracticable, that 
we do not think it is likely to do much harm ; or, rather, the lovely 
and incessant manifestations of beauty in which it is clothed are 
calculated to do more good to the mind of a young and enthu- 



368 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. CcHAP. XVIII. 

siastic reader, than the declamatory sophistries of the reasoning 
can do injury. 

In 1819 Shelley produced a work surprisingly distinct, in form 
and spirit, from any of his previous poems. This was the tra- 
gedy of ' The Cenci,' founded upon one of the most horrible 
domestic tragedies recorded in the black annals of Italian society 
in the Middle Ages — annals which seem written with blood and 
poison, and recalling a mode of existence only the more revolting 
from the glow of intellectual splendour which art, literature, and 
civilization throw over corruption and profligacy. This portion 
of history resembles the terrific picture of Correggio in which 
the gilded wreathing serpents are twined around the features of 
Medusa, lovely but infernal. The style of this play is astonish- 
ingly intense and nervous, and the character of the unhappy 
Beatrice contains some strokes of true and profound pathos, par- 
ticularly the scene before her execution. The father is one of 
those demons of wickedness which happily are so rare, that our 
incredulity becomes an antidote to our loathing. Such beings are 
unfit for dramatic purposes, and it is no defence to say that they 
have existed : they are foul anomalies. 

We have but iew words to say of a number of Shelley's sub- 
sequent poems — ' Hellas,' ' The Witch of Atlas,' ' Adonais' (a la- 
ment for the death of Keats), and ' Rosalind and Helen.' In the 
former two of these works we have a repetition, though in some- 
what feebler and more diluted language, of the same wild decla- 
mation against the corruptions of society which forms the staple 
of his earlier poems, and a reiteration of the same AiUacies about 
priestcraft and kingcraft ; but ' Adonais' is a beautiful and affec- 
tionate tribute to the memory of Keats, whose early death deprived 
the world of the promise of a great poet, and whose manner of 
thinking and writing had much in common with that of Shelley. 
In 'Rosalind and Helen' we have an exposition (in form of a 
domestic tale) of the evils which the poet supposes to arise from 
the institution of marriage. He shows us two beautiful and ac- 
complished beings, one of whom is driven to despair and death 
by the tyranny and caprices of an old and repulsive husband, 
while the other lives a life of happiness and innocence in a union 
not sanctified by the indissoluble tie of marriage. But, in all hu-i 
man affairs, " abusus non tollit usum," and this tie was undoubt- 
edly invented for the general welfare of mankind, to which ex- 
perience shows that it in the main conduces : so the selection of 
an arbitrary and imaginary case, where misery follows wedlock, 
and happiness is assured lay a kind of philosophical concubinage, 
proves nothing at all. It would be just as easy, and infinitely 
more in accordance with ordinary experience, to select an exactly^ 
opposite case. Such theorists begin at the wrong end : marriagej 



CHAP. Xvni.] SHELLEY: HIS POEMS PECITLIARITIES. 369- 

is not bad because married people are sometimes unhappy to- 
gether, but people may be unhappy though marriage in the main 
is good. 

The death of this exquisite poet, and benevolent visionary, was 
singular and melancholy. He was returning in a small yacht 
from Ravenna to Rome, when iiis vessel was caught by a squall 
in the bay of Spezzia, and Shelley and his two companions per- 
ished. The poet's body was afterwards washed on shore, and 
burned, after the ancient manner, on a funeral pile, in presence of 
Byron and several others of his friends. The ashes of Shelley 
were buried in the Protestant cemetery of Rome, near the pyra- 
mid of Cestius — a spot of sad and tranquil loveliness, where re- 
pose the remains of many English wanderers. 

Shelley died in 1822, and in his end, and even in the manner 
of his funeral, there was something strangly in accordance with 
his life and sorrows. In spite of the hostile and revolutionary 
tone of his philosophy, he was, as a man, mild, benevolent, tem- 
perate, refined: his person, almost ethereal in its delicacy, was iii 
apt accordance with the abstract and visionary tone of his writ- 
ings : the chief characteristic of his poetry is its profusion of 
imagery, and a spiritual, tender harmony, like the fitful music of 
the iEolian harp, which no English poet has ever surpassed in 
variety and sweetness ; the images are of a character at once bold 
and tender in the highest degree ; his intensely passionate study 
of Greek literature (particularly the lyric writings) gives a pecu- 
liar air of classical purity and transparency to his conceptions ; 
and from the same inexhaustible source he drew those artifices of 
metrical arrangement which make the English language, in his 
hands, as flexible, as musical as the Greek itself. One peculi- 
arity iu his manner is particularly to be noticed: it is what may 
be called incatenation, a linking together of images, each of which 
is attached to that which precedes it, and which in its turn sug- 
gests another which follows it, but which often lead the reader 
far away from the original generating idea ; so that, if we take 
two images placed even at a short interval from each other, we 
shall often be astonished that the two ideas so different can be 
connected together by any middle term. Shelley's mind was in 
the highest degree impressionable — nay, almost feminine ; and 
thus we often perceive a want of keeping and relief in the sub- 
ordinate parts of his diction : the subsidiary or illustrative image 
is as vivid as that which it is meant to enforce or interpret ; and 
in him we find a perpetual interchange of type and thing typified, 
as, for instance, in his exquisite ' Ode to the West Wind,' where 
the dead leaves are compared to ghosts flying before the spell of 
an enchanter. Shakspeare has innumerable examples of this in- 
catenation of metaphors and images : it is impossible to open his 



370 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. CcHAP. XIX. 

plays without seeing plentiful instances of it: it is, indeed, the 
characteristic of his manner : but in him the secondary, the il- 
lustrative, is always subordinate ; while in Shelley the ornament 
perpetually eclipses the thing to be adorned. In short, Shak- 
speare " writes all like a ma/?," while Shelley writes like a 
woman. This singular tendency sometimes renders passages 
otherwise beautiful almost unintelligible, as, for instance, in those 
wonderful lines ' On a Cloud,' where the illustrations, drawn from 
animated nature, are so crowded in the delineation of inanimate 
things, that the effect is rather fantastical and dazzling than beau- 
tiful or distinct. Conscious, too, perhaps, of \h\sfeminineness of 
mind, so ill in accordance with the haughty and serene tone of 
philosophy which he struggled to maintain, he was apt to exag- 
gerate the horrible and repulsive, and his struggles to attain energy 
and a fierce declamatory tone are often rather extravagant than 
powerful. But with all these deductions made, the genius of 
Shelley will not fail to be held by posterity as a wonderful mani- 
festation of power, of grace, and sweetness ; and the ode we have 
just quoted, and the lovely ' Lines written in the Euganean Hills,' 
and that to a ' Skylark,' which is the very warbling of the triumph- 
ant bird, and the tender beauty of the ' Sensitive Plant,' and the 
magical translations of the ' Walpurgisnacht' of Goethe, and a 
thousand passages in the longer poems, will form for the memory 
of Shelley a wreath of fadeless flowers worthy of him who was 
the friend of Byron, and the pure apostle of a noble but mistaken 
philanthropy. 



CHAPTER XIX. 



THE MODERN NOVELISTS. 



Prose Fiction — The Romance: Walpole, Mrs. Radcliffe, Lewis, Maturin, and 
Mrs. Shelley — James, Ainsworth, and Bulwer — The Novel : Miss Burney — 
Godwin — Miss Edgeworth — Local Novels: Gait, Wilson, Banim, &c. — Fash- 
ionable Novels: Ward, Lister, &c. — Miss Austen — Hook — Mrs. Trollope — 
Miss Mitford — Warren — Dickens — Novels of Foreign Life : Beckford, Hope, 
andMorier — Naval and Military Novels : Marryat and R. Scott. 

The department of English literature which has been cultivated 
during the latter half of the last and the commencement of the 
present century with the greatest assiduity and success is undoubt- 
edly that of prose fiction — the romance and the novel. 

This branch of our subject is so extensive, and it embraces 



<OHAF. XIX.Il PROSE FICTION: WALPOLE. 371 

Such a multitude of works and names, that the only feasible method 
of treating it so as to give an idea of its immense riches and fer- 
tility will be to classify the authors and their productions into a few 
great general species: and though there are some names (as that 
of Bulwer, for example) which may appear to belong to several 
of these subdivisions, our plan will be found, we trust, to secure 
clearness and aid the memory. The divisions which we propose 
are as follows : I. Romances properly so called ; i. e. works of 
narrative fiction, embodying periods of ancient or middle-age his- 
tory, the adventures of which are generally of a picturesque and 
romantic character, and the personages (whether taken from his- 
tory, or invented so as to accord with the time and character of 
the action) of a lofty and imposing kind. II. The vast class of 
pictures of society, whether invented or not. These are generally 
novels, i. e. romans de vie inlime, though some, as those of God- 
win, may be highly imaginative, and even tragic. This class con- 
tains a great treasury of what may be called pictures of local 
manners, as of Scottish and Irish life. III. Oriental novels — a 
branch almost peculiar to English fiction ; and originating partly 
in the acquaintance with the East derived by Great Britain from 
her gigantic Oriental empire, and partly from the Englishman's 
restless, inappeasable passion for travelHng. IV. Naval and mili- 
tary novels; giving pictures of striking adventure, and containing 
records of England's innumerable triumphs, by sea and land, 
together with sketches of the manners, habits, and feelings of our 
soldiers and sailors. 

The history of modern prose fiction in England will be found 
to accord pretty closely with the classification we have just adopt- 
ed. We have spoken in another place of the three patriarchs of 
the English novel — Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett; and the 
immense class of works we are about to consider may be looked 
upon as totally distinct from the immortal productions of these 
great men, though the first impulse given to prose fiction will be 
found to have been in no sense communicated by ' Clarissa,' 
'Tom Jones,' or 'Roderick Random.' This impulse was given 
by Horace Walpole, the fastidious dilettante and brilliant chro- 
nicler of the court of scandal of his day, a man of singularly acute 
penetration, of sparkling epigrammatic style, but of a mind devoid 
of enthusiasm and elevation. Rather a French courtier in taste 
and habits than an English nobleman, he retired early from poli- 
tical life, veiling a certain consciousness of political incapacity 
under an efl^eminate and affected contempt for a parliamentary 
career, and shut himself up in his little fantastic Gothic castle at 
Strawberry Hill, to collect armour, medals, manuscripts, and 
painted glass, and to chronicle, with malicious assiduity, in his vast 



372 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIX. 

and brilliant correspondence, the absurdities, follies, and weak^ 
nesses of his day. 

'The Castle of Otranto' is a short tale, written with great rapid- 
ity and without any preparation, in which the first successful 
attempt was made to take the Feudal Age as the period, and the 
passion of mysterious, superstitious terror as the prime mover, of 
an interesting fiction. Tlie supernatural machinery consists of a 
gigantic armed figure dimly seen at midnight in the gloomy halls 
and huge staircases of this feudal abode — of a colossal helmet 
which finds its way into the courtyard, filling everybody with 
dread and consternation — of a picture which descends from its 
frame to upbraid a \vicked oppressor — of a vast apparition at the 
end — and a liberal allowance of secret panels, subterranean pas- 
sages, breathless pursuit and escape. The manners are totally 
absurd and unnatural, the heroine being one of those inconsistent 
portraits in which the sentimental languor of the eighteenth cen- 
tury is superadded to the female character of the Middle Ages — 
in short, one of those incongruous contradictions which we meet 
in all the romantic fictions before Scott. 

The immense success of Walpole's original and cleverly-writ- 
ten tale encouraged other and more accomplished artists to follow 
in the same track. After mentioning Clara Reeve, whose 'Old 
English Baron' contains the same defects without the beauties of 
Walpole's haunted castle, we come to the great name of this class, 
Anne Radclifle, whose numerous romances exhibit a very high 
order of genius, and a surprising power (perhaps never equalled) 
over the emotions of fear and undefined mysterious suspense. Her 
two greatest works are, ' The Romance of the Forest,' and ' The 
Mysteries of Udolpho.' The scenery of her predilection is that 
of Italy and the south of France ; and though she does not place 
the reader among the fierce and picturesque life of the Middle 
Ages, she has, perhaps, rather gained than lost by choosing the 
ruined castles of the Pyrenees and Apennines for the theatre, and 
the dark passions of profligate Italian counts for the principal 
moving power, of her wonderfid fictions. The substance of them 
all is pretty nearly the same ; and the author's total incapacity to 
paint individual character only makes us the more admire the 
power by which she interests us througli the never-failing medium 
of suspense. Mystery is the whole spell. Nothing can be poorer 
and more conventional than the personages : they are not human 
beings, nor even the types of classes ; they have no more indi- 
viduality than the pieces of a chessboard; they are merely count- 
ers; but the skill with which the author juggles with them gives 
them a kind of awful necromantic interest. The characters are 
mere abstract algebraical expressions, but they are made the ex- 
ponents of sucli terrible and intense fear, suffering and suspense, 



CHAP. XIX.] MRS. RADCLIFFE. 373 

that we sympathise with their fate as if they were real. Her re- 
pertory is very limited: a persecuted sentimental young lady, a 
wicked and mysterious count, a haggard monk, a tattling but faith- 
ful waiting-maid — such is the poor human element out of which 
these wonderful structures are created. Balzac, in one of his tales, 
speaks with great admiration of an artist who, by a few touches 
of his pencil, could give to a most commonplace scene an air 
of overpowering horror, and throw over the most ordinary and 
prosaic objects a spectral air of crime and blood. Through a 
half-opened door you see a bed with the clothes confusedly heaped, 
as in some death-struggle, over an undefined object which fancy 
whispers must be a bleeding corpse; on the floor you see a slip- 
per, an upset candlestick, and a knife perhaps ; and these hints 
tell the story of blood more significantly and more powerfully 
than the most tremendous detail, because the imagination of man 
is more powerful than art itself: — 

" Over all there hung a cloud of fear, 

A sense of mystery the spirit daunted, 
And said, as plain as whisper to the ear, 
The place is haunted." 

The great defect of Anne RadclifTe's fictions is not their tedious- 
ness of description, nor even the somewhat mawkish sentiment- 
ality with which they may be reproached, nor the feebly-elegant 
verses which the heroines are represented as writing on all occa- 
sions (indeed all these things indirectly conduce to the efl'ect by 
contrast and preparation) ; but the unfortunate principle she had 
imposed upon herself, of clearing up, at the end of the story, all 
the circumstances that appeared supernatural — of carrying us, as 
it were, behind the scenes at the end of the play, and showing us 
the dirty ropes and trap-doors, the daubed canvas, the Bengal fire, 
by which these wonderful impressions had been produced. If 
we had supped after the plav with the " blood-bolter'd Banquo," 
or the " majesty of buried Denmark," we should not probably be 
able to feel a due amount of terror the next time we saw them on 
the stage ; but in Mrs. Radclifll'e, where the feeling of terror is the 
principal thing aimed at, this discovery of the mechanism de- 
prives us of all future interest in the story ; for, after all, pure fear 
—sensual, not moral, fear — is by no means a legitimate object of 
high art. 

A class of writing apparently so easy, and likely to produce so 
powerful and universal an efl'ect — an effect even more powerful 
on the least critical minds — was, of course, followed by a crowd 
of writers. Most of these have descended to oblivion and a de- 
served neglect. We may say a few words of Lewis, Maturin, 
and Mrs. Shelley. The first of these, a good-natured efl^emi- 
nate man of fashion, the friend of Byron, and one of the early 
32 



374 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIX. 

literary advisers of Scott, was the first to introduce into England 
a taste for the infant German literature of that day, with its spec- 
tral ballads and diablerie of all kinds. He was a man of lively 
and childish imagination ; and besides his metrical translations of 
the ballads of Biirger, and others of the same class, he published 
a prose romance called ' The Monk,' full of horrible crimes and 
diabolic agency. It contains several passages of considerable 
power, particularly the episode of ' The Bleeding Nun,' in which 
the wandering Jew — that godsend for all writers, good, bad, and in- 
different, of the "intense" or demoniac school — is introduced with 
picturesque effect; but the book owes its continued popularity 
(though, we are happy to say, only among half-educated young 
men and ecstatic milliners) chiefly to the licentious warmth of 
many of its scenes. Maturin was a young Irishman of great pro- 
mise and still greater vanity, who carried the intellectual merits 
and defects of his countrymen to an extreme little short of carica- 
ture: his imagination M'as vivid, and he possessed a kind of ex- 
travagant and convulsive eloquence, but his works are full of the 
most outrageous absurdities. He perpetually mistakes monstros- 
ity for power, and lasciviousness for warmth. His life was short 
and unhappy, and his chief work is 'Melmoth,' a farrago of im- 
possible and inconceivable adventures, without plan or coherence, 
in which the Devil (who is represented as an Irish gentleman of 
good family in the eighteenth century) is the chief agent. Mrs. 
Shelley is known also, in this department, as the authoress of the 
powerful tale of 'Frankenstein,' in which a young student of physi- 
ology succeeds in constructing, out of the horrid remnants of the 
churchyard and dissecting-room, a kind of monster, to which he 
afterwards gives, apparently by the agency of galvanism, a kind 
of spectral and convulsive life. This existence, rendered insup- 
portable to the monster by his vain cravings after human sympa- 
thy, and by his consciousness of his own deformity, is employed 
in inflicting (in some cases involuntarily) the most dreadful retri- 
bution on the guilty philosopher; and some of the chief appear- 
ances of the monster, particularly the moment when he begins to 
move for the first time, and, towards the end of the book, among 
the eternal snows of the arctic circle, are managed with a striking 
and breathless effect, that makes us for a moment forget the child- 
ish improbability and melodramatic extravagance of the tale. 

To this subdivision will belong the works of that most easy and 
prolific writer, James — the most industrious, if not always most 
successful, imitator of Scott, in revival of chivalric and middle-age 
scenes. The number of James's works is immense, but they bear 
among themselves a family likeness so strong, and even oppress- 
ive, that it is impossible to consider this author otherwise than 
as an ingenious imitator and copyist — first of Scott, and secondly 



CHAP. XIX. H JAMES AND AINSWORTH. 375 

of himself. The spirit of repetition is, indeed, carried so far, that 
it is possible to guess beforehand, and with perfect certainty, the 
principal contents, and even the chief persons, of one of James's 
historical novels. His heroes and heroines, whose features are 
almost always gracefully and elegantly sketched in, have more of 
the English than continental character. We are sure to have a 
nondescript grotesque as a secondary personage — a half-crazy 
jester, ever hovering between the harebrained villain and the faithful 
retainer : we may count upon abundance of woodland scenery 
(often described with singular delicacy and tenderness of language) 
and moonlight rendezvous of robbers and conspirators. But 
whereas Scott has all these things, it must be remembered how 
much more he has beside. He looks through all things " with a 
learned spirit:" James stops short here, unless we notice his in- 
numerable pictures of battles, tournaments, hunting-scenes, and 
old castles, where we find much more of the forced and artificial 
accuracy of the antiquary, than of the poet's all-embracing, all- 
imagining eye. James is particularly versed in the history of 
France, and some of his most successful novels have reference to 
that country, among which we may mention ' Richelieu.' His 
great deficiency is want of real, direct, powerful human passion, 
and consequently of life and movement in his intrigues. There 
is thrown over his fictions a general air of good-natured, frank, and 
well-bred refinement, which, however laudable, cannot fail to be 
found rather tiresome and monotonous. 

This diff'erence between the works of Scotland those among his 
imitators who have endeavoured to revive the phantoms of past 
ages with " the very form and pressure of the time," is also per- 
ceptible in the works of Ainsworth and Bulwer : of course we al- 
lude only to those in which are depicted the manners of by-gone 
society. Both of these authors have enjoyed a very high degree 
of popularity ; and though it would be an injustice to the author 
of ' Eugene Aram' to compare him, in a general sense, with the 
writer of ' Rookwood' and 'Jack Sheppard,' yet we may with 
advantage establish a parallel between these two novelists as far as 
they are historical. Several of Ainsworth's earlier and best works 
were pictures of mediaeval manners and society, and they exhibit- 
ed, together with much of the extravagance, false taste, and melo- 
dramatic exaggeration of youthful productions, no small amount of 
power, picturesqueness, and originality. 

It may appear unjust to the genius of Victor Hugo to say so, 
but to our minds the romances of Ainsworth possess more resem- 
blance to the particular manner of ' Notre Dame de Paris' than 
any other productions of English literature. If the romantic 
school of modern France was really generated, as some critics 
maintain, by the unexampled fascination of Scott's historical fie- 



376 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIX. 

tions, the offspring very soon lost all family resemblance to its 
parent. All that is essential and characteristic in Scott has disap- 
peared — the simplicity, the ease, the natural and unforced pathos, 
the fresh and manly drollery, the obtaining of the most powerful 
impressions by the play of ordinary but consistent characters. 
Instead of this we have, in the modern French school, an intense 
convulsive energy, proceeding, not by gradual and uninterrupted 
progression, but by violent and consequently temporary jerhs of 
passion and surprise. In Scott there are very few scenes which 
can be detached bodily from the work so as to lose no portion of 
their interest and picturesqueness,and capable of forming gems or 
brilliant extracts in a Chrestomathia ; whereas, in the other writ- 
ers, these bright and salient scenes form precisely the merit of the 
work, and the writers seem to be of the opinion of Bayes, in ' The 
Rehearsal,' who asks "what the plague is the use of the plot, but 
to bring in the fine things ?" The general tone of Scott (as well 
as of Fielding, Cervantes, and Shakspeare) is remarkable for its 
universality — for being intelligible to all men, dealing with the 
ordinary elements of human character, and consequently coming 
home to all readers. These elements are indeed highly idealised, 
for the ideal is the very essence of art, but everybody can compre- 
hend them in the measure of his own powers and sympathies. 
The contrary of this takes place in the school of Hugo. Starting 
from the shallow paradox, that the adaptability of an object to the 
purposes of art can only be measured by its power of producing 
strong emotion, they have conceived that hideous and monstrous 
objects are quite as iit materials for their purpose as what is beau- 
tiful and sublime: if it be not true with them that " le laid est le 
beau," at least they have shown a perfect indifference which they 
siiould choose, and have even exhibited a preference for the horri- 
ble and the repulsive. They forget that there is a strong line of 
demarcation between horror and terror, and that it is the former 
sentiment alone which is a legitimate object of art. Tlie works 
of Ainsworth possess much of this fragmentary and convulsive 
character, and the erudition (often great) which he has lavished on 
his pictures of past ages, bears, like that of Victor Hugo, a painful 
air of effort — of having been read up for the purpose, and collected 
for the nonce. The most successful of Ainsworth's romances are 
' Rook wood' (the first) and 'Jack Sheppard :' the former owes its 
success chiefly to the wonderful hurry and rapid vividness of Tur- 
pin's ride from London to York in one day, and in the latter the 
author has broken up what appeared to the public to be new 
ground — the adventures of highwaymen, prostitutes, and tliief- 
takers. Defoe had done this before, and with astonishing power 
of invention and probability ; but that great moralist has never con- 
founded good and evil, and has shown his squalid ragamuffins as 



CHAP. XIX.3 BULWER. 377 

miserable in their lives as they were contemptible and odious in 
their crimes. Ainsworth, however, has looked upon the romantic 
side of the picture, and has represented his ruffian hero as a model 
of gallantry and courage. This, we know, is contrary to universal 
experience and probability; and while we read with breathless 
interest the escape of Jack from prison, we forget the monstrous 
inconsistencies of the story, and the mean and wolfish character 
of the real criminal, who is here elevated into a hero of romance. 
To the ignorant and uneducated, who are charmed, like everybody 
else, with the boldness, dexterity, and perseverance so often exhi- 
bited by the worst characters, and which are here dignified with all 
the artifices of description, but who cannot distinguish between the 
good and the evil which are mixed up even in the basest charac- 
ters, this kind of reading is capable of doing, and has done, the 
greatest mischief ; and the very talent — often undeniable — of such 
works, only renders them the more seductive and insidious. 

Bulwer has written in so many different styles, that he almost 
forms a separate subdivision of our classification of prose fiction. 
We may, however, view his long and active career under three 
distinct epochs, the first exampled in 'Pelham,' the second in 
* Eugene Aram,' and the third in 'Ernest Maltravers.' In the 
earliest of these we find him essaying to give a lively and some- 
what ironic reflection of the manners of the higher classes, min- 
gled with occasional scenes of low life, sometimes of a broadly 
comic and farcical, though more often of a gloomy tragic solem- 
nity ; in the second we find an attempt at the ideal in his art; and 
in the third a mixture of the pure ideal with a prevailing tone of 
philosophic analysis of character, and a metaphysical and abstract 
investigation into the principles of human passion and human 
life, their strength and weakness, their health and their disease. 
'Pelham' is in general gay and brilliant enough; not very pro- 
found, it is true, but lively, sparkling, and effervescent. It con- 
tains a great many ingenious paradoxes, clever epigrams, and 
good things ; many scattered hints and fragments of character, 
but not a single personage drawn with consistency and force. 
Pelham, the hero, is nothing but a compound of two or three 
affectations, which indeed are often found together in an effeminate 
dandy and wit about town, but which in no sense compose a real 
human being: Pelham bears the same relation to Tom Jones, for 
instance, that a painter's lay figure bears to a living man. The 
same thing may be said of Vincent; and Glanville is nothing bnt 
a caricature of the Corsairs, Manfreds, and Childe Harolds, which 
Byron's poetry brought into fashion. But in Byron these cha- 
racters, unnatural as they are, are rendered less apparently so by 
the romantic grandeur and melancholy beauty of the scenery 
which forms their background, and by the ideal and ecstatic tone 

32* 



378 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIX. 

which is essential to poetry; Glanville is Lara speaking in the 
House of Commons, wearing a dress-coat, with a fine house in 
Grosvenor Square. The scenes, towards the end of the book, 
among the thieves, are powerfully interesting, from the author's 
talent of direct, simple, unaffected description — a quality which 
he possesses in a high degree; but as pictures of the real manners 
and way of life of such persons, they are totally absurd and im- 
possible. In this novel, as well as in several others (in ' Paul 
Clifford' for instance, and in some parts of ' Ernest Mallravers'), 
Bulwer has attempted, like Ainsworth in 'Jack Sheppard,' or 
Eugene Sue in ' Les Mysteres de Paris,' to bring on the scene 
the interior life of the lowest orders of artisans, malefactors, &c.; 
but a whole work can never consist entirely of such scenes ; and 
with whatever fidelity these things and persons may be described, 
we always find these authors at a loss when it comes to the Jilting 
on these passages to the descriptions of ordinary life and per- 
sonages. They are placed separately, detachedly before the 
reader, like prints taken from a portfolio or pictures in a gallery; 
they do not melt into each other by just gradations, as they would 
to a person successively visiting them : we jump from one to the 
other ; there is nothing between. ' Paul CUfford,' the personages 
of which are almost all members of a band of highwaymen, the 
chief being the hero, is a notable example of this discord : the 
characters are alternately philosophers, high-bred gentlemen, and 
robbers ; Clifford himself a mixture of the coxcomb, the brigand, 
and the satirist of society. The want of harmony to which we 
have alluded is never to be found in the works of the greatest 
writers of fiction. Our curiosity is gratified, but not a craving 
after childish wonder; we have thieves and thieftakers in abund- 
ance, gipsies, and rioters, and we have also nobles and judges, 
tradesmen and princes; but we nowhere see sentimental pick- 
pockets, or highwaymen declaiming against the vanity of human 
wishes. Mere surprise in fiction is as much below the dignity of 
the art, as optical illusion is degrading to the art of painting. In 
the next phase of his literary development, Bulwer has given pic- 
tures of a more lofty, ambitious, and ideal kind. Of this * Eugene 
Aram' is an example. But here he has exhibited not only an 
ostentatious parade of indigested philosophy, crudely gathered 
up chiefly from German writers, but a very reprehensible neglect 
of the distinctions between good and evil, between virtue and 
crime. Aram, in the true record of his life, gathered from the 
prosaic but faithful documents of his trial, was a self-educated 
man of unusual powers of mind, but in a moral point of view a 
criminal of the most ordinary calibre. He committed under the 
basest of influences an atrocious and cowardly murder, which 
was afterwards discovered in a very singular manner ; he defended 



CHAP. XIX.] BULWER. 379 

himself with much perverted ability, which only increases our 
(leteslation for his character, and perished on a well-merited gal- 
lows. Now in Bulwer's story we have nothing of what we 
should conceive to be the most impressive and dramatic features 
of this event — the ever-present terror, the fascination of the mur- 
derer, his remorse, his struggles in the net of retribution which 
imprisoned him, the horrid certainty of discovery, and the striking 
scene of that discovery ; we have the robber and murderer of an 
old man metamorphosed into a romantic enthusiast of the beautiful 
and the good — a haughty and retiring scholar, who has been led, 
in spite of himself, into a crime which his soul abhors, and which 
he almost justifies on his trial by asserting that in robbing and 
murdering Daniel Clarke he wished to remedy the unjust and 
unequal distribution of wealth which Providence has made. 

This taste for soi-disant philosophy Bulwer carries yet farther 
in his later works ; in ' Zanoni' and ' Night and Morning' it forms 
the staple of the productions. Irritated, perhaps, by the shrewd 
common sense which characterises the judgment of English 
critics, and which did not fail, of course, to point out the weak 
parts and inconsistencies of many of his novels, Bulwer threw 
himself headlong into the turbid ocean of German metaphysics; 
and his later works, though still exhibiting his usual flowing style 
and vivacity of conception, have become a kind of clumsy alle- 
gories, generally developing a paradox or an absurdity. The 
truest and profoundest philosophy of life is to be gathered from 
the faithfullest representations of its action and passion ; the great 
verities of humanity spring, like wild flowers, by the hedges and 
waysides of existence ; and, to our idea, there is more true depth, 
true knowledge, true wisdom, in a single, fresh, vigorous, unaf- 
fected, strongly-drawn scene of Fielding or of Scott, than in whole 
libraries of such cloudy raptures as 'Zanoni' or as 'Alice.' His 
more purely historical novels are much superior, particularly 
' Rienzi,' though the character of the hero is rather of the nine- 
teenth than of the fourteenth century. This novel, which is also 
better constructed than his works usually are in point of plot, was 
to a certain degree a labour of love, inasmuch as it served the 
luthor to embody many of his political convictions. ' The Last 
Days of Pompeii ' is also generally read with great interest; and 
though there is rather too much parade of not always very accu- 
rate antiquarian knowledge, it is written with great verve and 
brilliancy of imagination. In ' The Last of the Barons' he has 
ventured into the enchanted ground occupied by Scott — English 
mediseval history ; but with exactly the success that was to be 
expected. The book is a heavy and extravagant caricature, with 
perhaps not a single page worthy of Bulwer's reputation. 

Our second subdivision — the novels of real life and society — 



380 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [ciIAP. XIX. 

is so extensive that we can but throw a rapid glance on its prin- 
cipal productions. To do this consistently with clearness we 
must begin rather far back, with the novels of Miss Burney. 
This lady, while yet residing at her father's house, composed, 
in her stolen moments of leisure, the novel of ' Evelina,' and is 
related not to have communicated to her father the secret of its 
having been written by her, until the astonishing success of the 
fiction rendered her avowal triumphant and almost necessary. 
'Evelina' was followed by a number of other novels bearing the 
same character : their chief defect is vulgarity of feeling — not that 
falsely-called vulgarity which describes \vith congenial animation 
low scenes and humble personages, but the affectation of delicacy 
and refinement. The heroines are perpetually trembling at the 
thought of impropriety, and exhibit a nervous, restless dread of 
appearing indelicate, that absolutely renders them the very essence 
of vulgarity. All the difficulties and misfortunes in these plots 
arise from the want, on the part of the principal personages, of a 
little candour and straightforwardness, and would be set right by 
a few words of simple explanation : in this respect the authoress 
drew from herself; for her lately-published 'Memoirs' exhibit 
her as existing in a perpetual fever of vanity and petty expedi- 
ents ; and in her gross affectation of more than feminine modesty 
and bashfulness — literary as well as personal — we see the painful, 
incessant flutter of her "darling sin" — "the pride that apes 
humility." Women are endowed by nature with a peculiar 
delicacy of tact and sensibility ; and being excluded, by the now- 
existing laws of society, from taking an active part in the rougher 
struggles of life, they acquire much more than the other sex a 
singular penetration in judging of character from slight and ex- 
ternal peculiarities. In acquiring this power they are manifestly 
aided by their really subordinate, though apparently supreme, 
position in society, by the seductions to which they are exposed, 
and by the tone of artificial deference in which they are always 
addressed : men who appear to each other in comparatively 
natural colours never approach women (particularly unmarried 
women) but with a mask of chivalry and politeness on their 
faces ; and women, in their turn, soon learn to divine the real 
character under all these smooth disguisements. 

The prevailing literary form, or type, of the present age, is 
undoubtedly the novel — the narrative picture of manners ; just as 
the epic is the natural literary form of the heroic or traditionary 
period: and the above remarks will, we think, sufficiently ex- 
plain the phenomenon of so many women now appearing, in 
France, Germany, and England, as novel writers. Our society 
is highly artifichil : the broad distinctions and demarcations which 
anciently separated one class of men and one profession from 



CHAP. XIX.] MISS BURNEY GODWIN. 381 

another, have been polished away, or filled up by increasing re- 
finement and the extension of personal liberty : the artisan and 
the courtier, the lawyer and the divine, are no longer distinguished 
either by professional costume, or by any of those outward and 
visible signs which formerly stamped their manners and language, 
and furnished the old comic writer with strongly-marked charac- 
ters ready made to his hand. We must now go deeper : the 
coat is the same everywhere ; consequently, we must strip the 
man — nay, we must anatomise him — to show how he difl^ers 
from his neighbours. To do this well, fineness of penetration 
is, above all, necessary — a quality which women, cseteris paribus, 
possess in a higher degree than men. 

Miss Burney was followed by a number of writers, chiefly 
women, among whom the names of Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. 
Opie are prominent. Their fictions, like those of Miss Edge- 
worth in more recent times, have a high and never-failing moral 
aim ; and both these ladies have exhibited a power over the feel- 
ings, and an intensity of pathos, not much inferior to Richard- 
son's in ' Clarissa Harlowe.' But their works are very unequal, 
and the pathos of which we speak is not diffused, but concen- 
trated into particular moments of the action, and is also obtained 
at the expense of great preparation and involution of circum- 
stances ; so that to compare their genius to (hat of Richardson, 
on the strength of a few powerful pictures of intense moral pathos, 
would be a gross injustice to the admirable and consummate 
artist, in whose works the pathos, inimitable as it is, forms but 
one item in a long list of his excellences. 

At the head of the second division of our fictions is undoubtedly 
William Godwin, a man of truly powerful and original genius, 
who devoted his whole life to the propagation of certain social 
and political theories — visionary, indeed, and totally impracticable, 
but marked with the impress of benevolence and philanthropy. 
With these ideas Godwin's mind was perfectly saturated and 
possessed, and this intensity of conviction, this ardent propagand- 
is7n, not only gives to his writings a peculiar character of earnest- 
ness and thought — earnestness, the rare.st and most impressive of 
literary qualities — but may be considered to have made him, in 
spite of all the tendencies of his intellectual character — invita 
Minerva — a novelist. Godwin was born in 1756, and appears 
to have sucked with his mother's milk those principles of resist- 
ance to authority, and attachment to free opinions in church and 
state, which had been handed down from one sturdy Dissenter to 
another from the days of the civil war and the republic. He was 
in reality one of those hard-headed enthusiasts — at once wild 
visionaries and severe logicians — who abounded in the age of 
Marvell, Milton, and Harrington ; and his true epoch would have 



382 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIX. 

been the first period of Cromwell's public life. His own career, 
extending down to his death in 1836, was incessantly occupied 
with literary activity : he produced an immense number of works, 
some immortal for the genius and originality they display, and all 
for an intensity and gravity of thought, for reading and erudition. 
The first work which brought him into notice was the ' Essay on 
Political Justice,' a Utopian theory of morals and government, by 
which virtue and benevolence were to be the ^* primum mobile^' 
of all human actions, and a philosophical republic — that favourite 
dream of visionaries — was to take place of all our imperfect modes 
of polity. Animated during his whole life by these opinions, he 
has embodied them under a variety of forms, among the rest in 
his immortal romances. The first and finest of these is 'Caleb 
Williams.' Its chief didactic aim is to show the misery and in- 
justice arising from our present imperfect constitution of society, 
and the oppression of our imperfect laws, both written and un- 
written — the jus scriptum of the statute-book, and the jits non 
scriptum of social feeling and public opinion. Caleb Williams 
is an intelligent peasant-lad, taken into the service of Falkland, 
the true hero, an incarnation of honour, intellect, benevolence, 
and a passionate love of fame. This model of all the chivalrous 
and elevated qualities has previously, under the provocation of 
the cruellest, most persevering, and tyrannic insult, in a moment 
of ungovernable passion, committed a murder: his fanatic love 
of reputation urges him to conceal this crime; and, in order to 
do this more effectually, he allows an innocent man to be exe- 
cuted, and his family ruined. Williams obtains, by an accident, 
a clue to the guilt of Falkland, when the latter, extorting from 
him an oath that he will keep his secret, communicates to his 
dependant the whole story of his double crime, of his remorse 
and misery. The youth, finding his life insupportable from the 
perpetual suspicion to which he is exposed, and the restless sur- 
veillance of his master, escapes; and is pursued through the 
greater part of the tale by the unrelenting persecution of Falkland, 
who, after having committed one crime under unsupportable pro- 
vocation, and a second to conceal the first, is now led, by his 
frantic and unnatural devotion to fame, to annihilate in Williams, 
the evidence of his guilt. The adventures of the unfortunate fugi- 
tive, his dreadful vicissitudes of poverty and distress, the steady, 
bloodhound, unrelaxing pursuit, the escapes and disguises of the 
victim, like the agonised turnings and doublings of the hunted 
hare — all this is depicted with an incessant and never-surpassed 
power of breathless interest. At last Caleb is formally accused 
by Falkland of robbery, and naturally discloses before the tribu- 
nal the dreadful secret which had caused his long persecution, 
and Falkland dies of shame and a broken heart. The interest 



CHAP. XIX.] MISS EDGEWORTH. 383 

of this wonderful tale is indescribable ; the various scenes are set 
before us with something of the minute reality, the dry, grave 
simplicity of Defoe. But in Godwin, the faculty of the pictur- 
esque, so prominent in the mind of Defoe, is almost absent: 
everything seems to be thought out, elaborated by an effort of 
the will. Defoe seems simply to describe things as they really 
were, and we feel it impossible to conceive that they were other- 
wise than so ; Godwin describes them (and with a wondrous 
power of coherency) as we feel they would be in such and such 
circumstances. His descriptions and characters are masterly 
pieces of construction; or, like mathematical problems, they are 
deduced step by step, infallibly from certain data. This author 
possesses no humour, no powers of description, at least of nature 
— none of that magic which communicates to inanimate objects the 
light and glow of sentiment — very little pathos ; but, on the other 
hand, few have possessed a more penetrating eye for that recon- 
dite causation which links together motive and action, a more 
watchful and determined consistency in tracing the manifestations 
of such characters as he has once conceived, or a more prevailing 
spirit of self-persuasion as to the reality of what he relates. The 
romance of 'Caleb Williams' is indeed ideaf; but it is an ideal 
totally destitute of all the trappings and ornaments of the ideal : 
it is like some grand picture painted in dead-colour. 

In 1799 appeared 'St. Leon;' in 1804, 'Fleetwood;' in 1817, 
' Mandeville ;' and in 1830, just before his death, ' Cloudesly.' 
These four works are romances in the same manner as ' Caleb Wil- 
liams ;' but there is perceptible in them a gradual diminution in 
vigour and originality — we do not mean oi positive, but of relative 
originality. ' St. Leon' is, however, a powerful conception, execut- 
ed in parts with a gloomy energy peculiar to this author. The story 
is of a man who has acquired possession of the great arcanum — the 
secret of boundless wealth and immortal life ; and the drift of the 
book is to give a terrible picture of the misery which would result 
from the possession of such an immortality and such riches, when 
deprived (as such a being must be) of the sympathies of human af- 
fection, and thejoys and woes of human nature. This novel contains 
several powerfully-delineated scenes, generally of a gloomy tone, 
and a female character, Marguerite, of singular beauty and interest. 

At the head — facile princeps — of the very large class of female 
novelists who have adorned the more recent literature of England, 
we must place Miss Edgeworth, born about 1768. This place 
she deserves, not only for the immense number, variety, and 
originality of her works of fiction, but also, and perhaps in a 
superior degree, for their admirable good sense and utility. 

Most of those who have undertaken the ill-requited but cer- 
tainly most important task of writing for children have failed. 



384 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIX. 

from not having sufficiently considered the nature and character 
of the childish mind. They are perpetually haunted by the 
notion that it is indispensable to write down to their audience ; 
they think it necessary to place the moral of their story offens- 
ively in the foreground ; they do not consider that this perpetually, 
perking, as it were, of the moral in the face of the reader — so 
offensive in a work addressed to grown-up persons — is no less dis- 
gusting to children, however young. Children hate to be lectured 
at least as much as their elders ; and, consequently, the great dif- 
ficulty in writing for the very young is either entirely to conceal, 
under an interesting and striking narrative, the nauseous dose of 
morality which is to be administered, or, at least, to gild the pill 
as far as possible. The chief defect of Berquin, and other excel- 
lent and well-intentioned writers for childhood, is the leaving 
nothing to be discovered by the intelligence of the little reader ; 
for children, like grown-up people, are exceedingly glad of the 
opportunity of employing the perceptive and comparative faculties 
of their minds ; nay, take the more pleasure in doing so, because 
those faculties have in general been but recently called info activi- 
ty. Therefore they despise those feeble and affected writings in 
which the characters are either complete embodiments of some 
virtue or its corresponding vice ; and their sense of probability is 
very much shocked by seeing represented in fiction what even 
their imperfect experience shows them to be never occurring in 
real life — i. e. characters of unmixed good or unmitigated evil, 
virtue invariably rewarded, and vice as invariably punished. Miss 
Edgeworth has written a complete literature for infancy and youth. 
She has had the sense and courage to begin from the very begin- 
ning ; and the first tale of her admirable series is, if we remember 
well, a story in words of one syllable, and adapted for the very 
earliest age. From this she has passed on to the exquisite little 
tales contained in 'The Parent's Assistant,' a collection to the 
first perusal of which no one ever looked back but with feelings 
of gratitude and delight ; and then through the various collections 
under the titles of 'Popular Tales,' ' iMoral Tales,' and ' Fashion- 
able Tales,' — a cycle of fictions which, including the novels of 
'Patronage,' 'Leonora,' 'Belinda,' 'Helen,' and 'The Absentee,' 
may boldly be said to contain more sound sense, acute observation 
of character, and applicability to practical life, than any set of 
works professing a didactic tendency. In all, the primary quali- 
ties just mentioned are equally visible. Even in ' Frank' and 
' Rosamond' — litde stories for the almost infant mind — we per- 
ceive the same infallible and irresistible sense, the same ease and 
vivacity of narration, and the same exquisite perception of cha- 
racter and the weaknesses of human nature. To those who 
confound form with matter in literary judgments it may seem 



CHAP. XIX.] LOCAL NOVELS. 385 

preposterous to assign such high praise to a collection of tales for 
children ; but. to persons who know from experience the difficulty 
of writing effectively in this manner, our criticism, laudatory as 
it is, will not appear extravagantly favourable. There are few 
failings of the opening character — few of those passions and 
errors which, being common to all ages of human life, so easily 
grow from defects into vices, and from vices into crimes — which 
she has not with penetrating eye pursued into the inmost foldings 
of the heart, and driven them forth with her gentle satire and ad- 
mirable logic of good sense. She excels in reducing a folly, or 
a false virtue, " ad absurdum ;" she is truly Socratic in the man- 
ner by which she drives a fallacy to its last defences. She has 
invariably and perseveringly discountenanced all exaltation and 
enthusiasm, and this incessant attention to the real and practical, 
however it may sometimes diminish her glory as a great artist, 
undoubtedly increases her utility as a moral teacher. In one class 
of characters she is almost unrivalled : no author has, with so 
much sympathy, penetration and vivacity, exhibited the national 
peculiarities of the Irish — a nation which she has studied with 
peculiar interest and love. Her volume entitled ' Castle Rackrent' 
is a kind of chronicle of the oddities and humours, the vices and 
generosity, of a series of Irish landlords, and contains a wonder- 
ful amount of acute observation. 

Miss Edgeworth's never-failing success in the delineation of 
this kind of local character will warrant us in placing her at the 
head of a class of novelists almost peculiar to English literature, 
and which ought to form a subdivision in this part of our subject 
— we mean, writers whose works are devoted to the delineation 
of local manners and character. Thus, there are many excellent 
writers of fiction who have devoted themselves to the painting of 
the peculiar manners, oddities, and domestic life of Scotland and 
Ireland exclusively. John Gait, in a long series of novels, has 
confined himself to the minute delineation — as rich, as original, 
and as careful as the workmanship of Douw, Mieris, or Teniers 
— of the interior life of the Scottish peasantry and provincial 
tradespeople. The ' Annals of the Parish,' the supposed journal 
of a quaint, simple-minded Presbyterian pastor, give us a sin- 
gularly amusing insight into the microscopic details of Scottish 
life in the lower classes. Gait's primary characteristic is a dry, 
subdued, quaint humour — a quality very perceptible in the lower 
orders of Scotland, and which in his works, as in the national 
character of his countrymen, is often accompanied by a very pro- 
found and true sense of the pathetic. The more romantic and 
tragical side of the national idiosyncrasy has been exquisitely 
portrayed in the touching tales of John Wilson, than whom, it 
should be remarked, no author has ever shown a finer eye for the 
33 



386 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIX. 

beauties of nature, or a profounder feeling for the virtues and 
trials of humble life. In this department of local manners the 
Irish have peculiarly distinguished themselves; as might, indeed, 
be expected, when we remember the intense vivacity of the Hi- 
bernian character, and the abundance of materials for the novelist 
afforded by the incessant social, religious, and political discord 
which for three centuries has never ceased to convulse that country. 
A long list of names presents itself to our notice, of which, how- 
ever, it will suffice to say a few words of the principal — Lady 
Morgan, Banim, Crofton Croker, Carleton, Mrs. Hall, Lever, and 
Lover. All these persons have devoted themselves, with more or 
less success, to the depicting the humours or the passions, the 
bright or dark, the liglit and shadow, of Irish life. Some — as, 
for example, Banim — have attached themselves more exclusively 
to the tragic, or rather melodramatic, scenes of Irish society, 
generally in the peasant class; and though it is impossible not to 
appreciate in their works a very marked degree of power, pic- 
turesqueness, imagination, and eloquence, yet these high qualities 
are often eclipsed by an exaggerated and ferocious energy which 
defeats its own object, and renders the work ridiculous instead of 
sublime. In the Irish character there is no repose, and where 
there is no repose there can be no contrast — the only element of 
strong impressions. Other authors, again, as Crofton Croker, have 
attached themselves more particularly, and with more effect, to 
the merely romantic and imaginative features of the national le- 
gends and superstitions; and the latter gentleman has produced a 
little collection of fairy tales worthy to be placed beside the. deli- 
cious ' Haus und Kindermarchen' of the brothers C4rimm. 

Of those who have devoted themselves to the delineation of 
purely English manners in all ranks of society the number is so 
immense that it would be as useless as tedious to give even a 
catalogue of their names and works. We shall content ourselves 
with selecting a few of the most prominent, or rather such as 
appear typical, and as, consequently, will give, in each instance, 
the general idea of the class at whose head we place them ; and 
first, of the writers of what are called " fashionable novels" — 
i. e. such as pretend to depict the manners, habits, and sentiments 
of aristocratic life. There is no country in the world, assuredly, 
in which the middle and lower classes possess so much personal 
liberty, and consequently so much enlightenment and independ- 
ence, as England ; but at the same time, there is hardly any 
nation in which, generally speaking, there is such a tendency in 
each class to admire and ape the manners of the class immediately 
above it. Our present business is with the literary effect of this 
peculiar admiration of aristocracy. Its tendency has been to flood 
our literature with a preposterous amount of trashy writings, pro- 



CHAP. XIX.] FASHIONABLE NOVELS AUSTEN. 387 

posing to give a faithful reflection of the manners antl habits of 
high life. Frequently composed, and as a mere speculation, by 
persons totally unacquainted with the scenes they essayed to de- 
scribe, and relying for their interest either on grotesque exaggera- 
tions of what they supposed to exist in those favoured regions — 
the Empyrean of fashion — or on coarse scandal and misrepresent- 
ation, these egregious books were either sign-post caricatures of 
what the authors had never seen, or were clumsy rechauffes of 
forgotten scandal, without wit, sense, probability, or nature. The 
more extravagant, however, were these pictures, and the less 
they resembled the ordinary life of the reader, the more eagerly 
were they admired ; and it is not to be wondered at that the time 
should come when persons, either themselves members of aristo- 
cratic society, or men capable of forming true ideas on the sub- 
ject, should have taken in hand to give something like a true pic- 
ture of the life of these envied circles. Among the best of these 
fashionable novels are those of Lister (perhaps this gendeman's 
' Granby' is as good a specimen as can be selected of this class), 
Lady Charlotte Bury, Mr. Ward, Benjamin D'Israeli, Lord Nor- 
mandy, and Lady Blessington. The novels of Ward are distin- 
guished by the author's attempt to unite with an interesting story 
a good deal of elevated philosophical and literary speculation ; so 
that many of his works — as, for instance, 'Tremaine,' 'De Vere,' 
'De Clifford,' &;c. — are something which is neither a good narra- 
tive nor a collection of good essays. Either the philosophy im- 
pedes the narrative, or tlie narrative destroys the interest and 
coherency of the philosophy. But the writings of Ward, as well 
as of Lister, are valuable for the simple and unaffected tone of 
their language, for the moral truth and elevation of their senti- 
ment, and for the charm that can only be expressed by that most 
untranslatable of English words — " gentlcmanliness." These 
merits are also in a very high degree possessed by such of James's 
novels as describe modern manners, many of which have con- 
siderable interest, of a gentle and subdued kind. Of Bulwer we 
have already spoken. 

Descending the social scale, we come to a very large and cha- 
racteristic department of works — the department which undoubt- 
edly possesses not only the greatest degree of value for the English 
reader, but will have the most powerful attraction for foreign 
students of our literature. This is that class of fictions which 
depicts the manners of the middle and lower classes ; and here 
again we shall encounter a singular amount of female names. The 
first in point of time, and perhaps almost the first in point of merit, 
in this class, especialh'- among the ladies, is Miss Austen, whose 
novels may be considered as models of perfection in a new and 
very difTicult species of writing. She depends for her effect upon 



388 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIX. 

no surprising adventures, upon no artfully involved plot, upon no 
scenes deeply pathetic or extravagantly humorous. She paints a 
society which, though virtuous, intelligent, and enviable above all 
others, presents the fewest salient points of interest and singularity 
to the novelist — we mean the society of English country gentle- 
men. Whoever desires to know the interior life of that vast and 
admirable body the rural gentry of England — a body which ab- 
solutely exists in no other country on earth, and to which the 
nation owes many of its most valuable characteristics — must read 
the novels of Miss Austen. In these works the reader will find 
very little variety and no picturesqueness of persons, little to in- 
spire strong emotion, nothing to excite wonder or laughter; but 
he will find admirable good sense, exquisite discrimination, and 
an unrivalled power of easy and natural dialogue. Miss Ferriar 
has also written a number of novels, generally depicting with great 
vivacity and truth the oddities and affectations of semi-vulgar life, 
but her works are far inferior, as artistic productions, to the elegant 
sketches of Miss Austen. 

Of the purely comic manner of fiction there are few better ex- 
amples than the novels of Theodore Hook. He is greatest in 
the description of London life, and particularly in the rich drollery 
with which he paints the vulgar efforts of suburban gentility to 
ape the manners of the great. There is notoneof liis humorous 
novels and shorter tales in which some scene could not be cited 
carrying this kind of drollery almost to the brink of farce. Many 
of his works — as ' Sayings and Doings' — consist of short tales, 
each destined to develop the folly or evil consequences of some 
particular inconsistency or affectation : thus the work just cited 
consists of a set of detached stories, each written on the text, as 
it were, of some common well-known proverb ; and though the 
narratives are of very slight construction, and do not contain very 
profound views of character, they none of them are devoid of 
some incredibly droll caricatures of manners. What, for example, 
can be more irresistible than the Bloomsbury evening party in 
* Maxwell,' or the dinner at Mr. Abberley's in ' The Man of Many 
Friends?' Hook's more exclusively serious novels are generally 
considered as inferior to those in which there is a mixture of the 
ludicrous ; and for one of the last works produced by this clever 
writer before his death, he selected a subject admirably adapted 
to the peculiar strength of his talent. This was ' Jack Brag,' a most 
spirited embodiment of the arts employed by a vulgar pretender 
to creep into aristocratic society, and the ultimate discomfiture of 
the absurd hero. Hook was a man of great but superficial powers, 
one of the most amusing conversationists of the day, an inimitable 
relater of anecdotes, a singer, and an improvvisatore ; but he was 
himself afflicted with the same passion for the society of the great 



CHAP. XIX.] MRS. TROLLOPE MISS MITFORD. 389 

as he has so wittily caricatured in Mr. Brag, and his life was 
passed in incessant but desultory literary labour as a novelist and 
journalist, in frequent disappointments, in debt, and in the empty 
applauses of the circle he amused. He died in 1842, leaving a 
large number of works, all of them exhibiting strong proofs of 
humour, but mosdy deprived of permanent value by the haste 
perceptible in their execution. The best of them are, perhaps, 
' Gilbert Gurney,' and its continuation, ' Gurney Married.' 

Very similar to Theodore Hook in the subject and treatment 
of her novels, and not unlike him in the general tone of her 
talent, is Mrs. Trollope, whose happiest elTorts are the exhibition 
of the gross arts and impudent stratagems employed by the pre- 
tenders to fashion. Mrs. Trollope's chief defect is coarseness 
and violence of contrast: she does not know where to stop, and 
is too apt to render her characters not ridiculous only, but odious, 
in which she offends against the primary laws of comic writing. 
Moreover, she neglects light and shade in her pictures; her per- 
sonages are either mere embodiments of all that is contemptible, 
or cold abstractions of everything refined and excellent. Her 
best work is, perhaps, 'The Widow Barnaby,' in which she has 
reached the ideal of a character of gross, full-blown, palpable, 
complete pretension and vulgar assurance. The widow, with her 
coarse handsome face, and her imperturbable, unconquerable self- 
possession, is a truly rich comic conception. Mrs. Trollope's 
plots are exceedingly slight and ill constructed, but her narrative 
is lively, and she particularly excels in her characters of good- 
natured shrewd old maids. She first became generally known to 
the literary world in 1832, by her relation of a residence of some 
years in ttie United States, in which she exhibited so unflattering 
a picture of American society, that our transatlantic neighbours 
have not yet recovered from the paroxysm of anger into which 
the rough strictures of Mrs. Trollope threw them. 

It would be a great injustice were we not to devote a few words 
of admiration to the charming sketches of Miss Mitford, a lady 
who has described the village life and scenery of England with 
the grace and delicacy of Goldsmith himself. 'Our Village' is 
one of the most delightful books in the language: it is full of those 
home scenes which form the most exquisite peculiarity, not only 
of the external nature, but also of the social life of the country. 
In nothing is our nation so happily distinguished from all others 
as in the enlightenment, the true refinement, the virtue, and the 
dignity of her middle and lower classes, and in no position are 
those classes so worthy of admiration as in the quiet, tranquil ex- 
istence of the country. She describes with the truth and fidelity of 
Crabbe and Cowper, but without the moral gloom of the one, and 
the morbid sadness of the other. Whether it is her pet greyhound 

33* 



390 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIX. 

Lily, or the sunburnt, curly, ragged village child, the object glows 
before us with something of that daylight sunshine which we find in 
its highest perfection in the rural and familiar images of Shakspeare. 
Passing over Smith, whose numerous novels are little more 
than repetitions or imitations of the works which were in fashion 
at the different periods when he wrote them, we come to Samuel 
Warren, who obtained an enviable reputation for vigour and ori- 
ginality so early as 1837, when he commenced contributing to 
'Blackwood's Magazine' a series of tales entitled 'Passages from 
the Diary of a late Physician,' The nature of these narratives 
may easily be guessed from their title, and Warren very skilfully 
maintained the disguise of a medical man, gained chiefly by 
his own early introduction into a humble branch of that profes- 
sion. The tales themselves are of various lengths, and very 
unequal degrees of merit. They are all, with the exception of 
one or two (which are not important enough to change the gene- 
ral impression on the reader), of a very tragic and painful nature 
— dark and agonising pages from the vast book of human suffer- 
ing. The scenes are taken from almost every gradation of social 
life; we have the last moments of the condemned forger, the slow 
martyrdom of a virtuous philosopher, the madness of the lover 
and the statesman, and two or three most impressive pictures of 
commercial ruin, and the fatal effect of vice, ill-regulated passions, 
and a morbid indulgence of imagination. Perhaps the finest of 
these tales are those entitled ' The Spectre-smitten,' ' The Banker's 
Clerk,' 'The Statesman,' and 'The Forger.' The style, though 
occasionally rather too highly coloured, is very direct, powerful, 
and unaffected ; and the too great prevalence of a tone of agony 
and extremt distress, which certainly injures the effect of the 
■whole, by depriving the work of relief, which is, above all, indis- 
pensable in painful subjects, is perhaps rather attributable to the 
nature of the subjects than to any defect of the artist. It is but 
just to remark, too, that this monotony of gloom and agony is not 
perceptible in these tales as they at first appeared, separately and 
at considerable intervals, in the pages of a magazine, though it is 
certainly objectionable in them when collected into a single pub- 
lication. Encouraged by this success, Mr. Warren began the 
tale of 'Ten Thousand a-Year,' which also appeared in 'Black- 
wood's Magazine.' This work portrays the unexpected eleva- 
tion to immense wealth and importance of one of the most 
contemptible beings that the imagination can conceive, Mr. Tit- 
tlebat Titmouse, a vulgar, ignorant coxcomb of the lowest order, 
a linen-draper's shopman in Oxford-street, and suddenly exalted, 
through tlie instrumentality of some rascally attorneys, who have 
discovered a defect in a pedigree, to the third heaven of Eng- 
lish aristocracy. The book is crowded with "scenes of many- 



CHAP. XIX.] dickens: PICKWICK. 391 

coloured life," and with an infinity of personages, all vigorously, 
and some admirably drawn. The gradual development of the 
plot is carried on, not only with considerable skill and probability, 
but with a great deal more attention to detail than is usual in 
modern fiction ; and many of the scenes are highly dramatic and 
natural — for instance, the dinner at Mr. Quirk's; the trial; the 
suicide of Gammon at the end of the book, which is as finely 
•worked up as anything in Richardson; and the insanity of Lord 
Dreddlington. Mr. Warren is a barrister, and a distinguished 
writer on legal education ; and we cannot, therefore, be surprised 
that he should exhibit great and accurate knowledge, not only of 
the profession itself, but of the habits of its members. The work 
is undeniably a production of great skill and genius, and, setting 
aside a little political partiality (for all Mr. Warren's good people 
are Tories, and his bad ones as invariably Whigs), must be con- 
sidered as giving a vivid, well-drawn, and impressive picture of 
modern English society. 

The greatest name in the contemporary literature of Great 
Britain is indubitably that of Charles Dickens, who first appeared 
before the public some twelve years ago, as the author of a short 
series of sketches written to fill the vacant columns of a London 
newspaper. These were very slight but charming descriptions 
of Metropolitan or suburban life, and must be considered as the 
first breaking up of an entirely new literary vein. The subject is 
" everyday life and everyday people," and no author ever showed 
a more delicate skill in appreciating and expressing the almost 
imperceptible shades of London life. The best sketches were 
those of a purely descriptive character, such as ' The Marine- 
store Shop,' ' Seven Dials,' ' The Streets ;' in short, those in 
which some phase of London life, or one of the thousand ap- 
pearances of London scenery, is set before us. Several of these 
sketches were little narratives, of which the most ambitious and 
elaborate are invariably the least eflfective ; while those embody- 
ing some slight trait of character and manners exhibited a victo- 
rious power of exciting pathetic impressions, and an infallible 
lact for the various shades of personal or professional oddity. It 
was easy to see that a perfectly original author had appeared, 
possessing an inexhaustible knowledge of all the mysteries of 
London life, particularly in the lower class, and that rare and in- 
fallible evidence of genius — the power of extracting novelty and 
interest from the most ordinary and common details of society, 
from things wliich we are so familiar with that we cannot con- 
ceive how they can contain materials either for laughter or for 
tears. In 1837 began the publication, in monthly numbers, each 
containing about two chapters, of the humorous tale ' The Pick- 
wick Papers,' which may be described as a succession of de- 



393 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIX. 

tached adventures, very slightly connected together by a thread 
of plot, full of the richest and raciest delineations of London 
scenery, characters, and oddities. Mr. Pickwick himself, the 
citizen Don Quixote of the nineteenth century, is a personage as 
natural, as delightful, and as completely drawn as the inimitable 
hero of Cervantes. But what praise can be sufficiently enthusi- 
astic for the admirable conception of Sam Weller, that inimitable 
compound of wit, simplicity, quaint humour, and fidelity! The 
"gamin de Paris" does not possess a more distinctive and attract- 
ive physiognomy than Dickens has here immortalised in this 
exquisite portrait of the Londoner ; perhaps since Parson Adams 
literature cannot afford an instance of a personage so exquisitely 
true to nature, so intensely comic, so individual, and at the same 
time so perfect a type of a class, as this delightful creation. Of 
the inferior persons and the adventures it will perhaps suffice to 
say, that those which belong to London life — Boz's peculiar do- 
main — are almost invariably exquisite; but in quitting the streets 
of the capital Dickens seems to leave behind him much of his 
characteristic delicacy and power. Not but that many of his de- 
scriptions of country and provincial scenery are exceedingly rich 
and delicate ; but he seems ever most at home in the great Baby- 
lon, and appears to look upon every other object with the eye 
of one who, though a painter and a poet of rare merit, is still a 
Londoner — a " Cockney." Nothing can be more admirably true 
to nature and humorous than the supper-party of the medical stu- 
dents, the scenes of low life in which most prominently figure 
Mrs. Bardell, Mrs, Cluppins, and Mrs. Raddle, with her unfortu- 
nate henpecked husband. All the passages in which we behold 
any of the multitudinous variety of attorneys and attorneys' clerks 
— a most characteristic species in London — are unsurpassable; it 
is indisputable that since Scott no author has appeared in Euro- 
pean literature who has succeeded in producing anything like the 
impression made by these truly original draughts from nature. 
The plot or intrigue of this work is absolutely nothing; the per- 
sonages flit before the reader like the phantoms of the magic- 
lantern ; but we forget all the improbability of the fable in the 
vivacity and fluent abundance of the incidents. This author is 
a striking proof of the truth that the same delicacy of mental 
organization which renders a man susceptible to the impressions 
of the humorous and the comic, best enables him to command 
our tears. Many of the defects of this work are to be traced to 
the manner of its appearance, in detached portions. There is 
every reason to suppose, not only that it was published, but that 
it was also composed, in this desultory and fragmentary form; 
and the increasing practice of giving to the world narratives in this 
manner is, we think, productive of so much injury to this branch 



CHAP. XIX.] dickens: NICKLEBY OLIVER TWIST. 393 

of literature, that we cannot refrain from saying a few words on 
the subject. The immense development within a few years, both 
in England and other countries, of periodical literature or journal- 
ism, has induced almost all modern authors to publish works 
(even of continuous fiction) in this form. The consequence is 
that the writer, whatever be his genius, and however carefully he 
may have previously arranged the plan and outline of his work, 
finds himself exposed to a perpetual temptation of over-colouring 
each particular portion. He knows that the public expects in 
each monthly or weekly " feuilleton" something highly spiced and 
intensely interesting ; and is thus tempted to neglect that grada- 
tion, that proportion, that subordination of the parts to the whole, 
which is as necessary to the due effect of a novel as of a picture 
or as of a work of architecture. 

' The Pickwick Papers,' the success of which was enormous 
(100,000 copies having been sold, according to common report), 
was almost immediately followed by ' Nicholas Nickleby,' a more 
regular and carefully constructed fiction, exhibiting no diminu- 
tion of power, originality and picturesqueness. The events take 
place chiefly in London, though one important portion of the 
work is devoted to giving a most frightful picture of the atroci- 
ties perpetrated in cheap schools — a nuisance which Dickens' 
powerful expose in this novel tended mainly to diminish, if not 
altogether to abate. Mr. Squeers, the ignorant, cruel, and rapa- 
cious schoolmaster, is a chef-d'oeuvre ; and the wanderings of 
Nicholas, with his broken-spirited protege Smike, are full of va- 
riety and interest ; particularly their adventures in Mr. Vincent 
Crummles's troop of provincial actors. Among the serious cha- 
racters in this tale are two usurers, Ralph Nickleby and Arthur 
Gride, which, as striking yet perfectly natural embodiments, have 
perhaps never been surpassed. 

With a fertility like that of Scott, Dickens very speedily ap- 
peared again before the public in ' Oliver Twist,' a simple tale of 
the adventures of a charity-boy, who " falls among thieves," and 
is initiated, though without his innocence being corrupted, into all 
the mysteries of the London housebreakers and pickpockets. 
The " merry old gentleman," Mr. Fagin, a Jew who keeps a 
kind of boarding-house for a society of young thieves, and the 
acolytes who are grouped around this venerable professor of the 
art of appropriation, all these are as fine as anything in Smollett ; 
the Artful Dodger in particular is a gem, an absolute literary type ; 
but not Smollett, nor Fielding, nor perhaps all the romance-writers 
whose works we possess, could have produced anything equal, 
in terrific reality and vividness, to the murder of Nancy and the 
wanderings of the ruffian Sykes. Sykes and his dog alone are 
enough to establish Dickens's fame as a great original writer. 



394 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIX. 

Nothing so prosaic in its subject, yet raised by the mere force of 
genius to a true intensity of horror, is perhaps to be found in fic- 
tion. The adventures of Oliver, the hero, are unnatural; but the 
true strength of the work consists in the other characters. 

The next work of our inexhaustible novelist was ' Master Hum- 
phrey's Clock,' in which, under a general fiction not very pro- 
bable or well imagined, the author intended to unite a number of 
detached stories. Of these we have two, 'The Old Curiosity 
Shop'' and ' Barnaby Rudge.' The first is a powerful and im- 
pressive delineation of the gambler's mania, exhibited in a mise- 
rable old being, tottering on the verge of the grave, and a number 
of subordinate personages, sometimes grotesque, as Quilp, but 
always stamped with vigour and consistency. Above all these, 
and in the thick atmosphere of misery, hopeless suffering, and 
privation, floats the exquisite and angelic figure of "Little Nell," 
one of the most enchanting conceptions of grace and innocence — 
the more admirable, perhaps, as Dickens is not always very suc- 
cessful in such delineations. ' Barnaby Rudge' is in some sense 
historical, as its chief action is the dreadful insurrection of 1783, 
called " Lord George Gordon's Riots," when the refuse of the 
London population, under the pretext of a dread of Popery, com- 
mitted, during several days, the most horrible disorders in the 
capital. These riots, and the chief personages who figure in 
them, are set before us with great but somewhat exaggerated 
energy, and this principal action is combined with the detection 
of a horrid fratricide supposed to have been committed some 
years before. The long agonies of the unrepentant murderer are 
described with a power that reminds of the admirable episode of 
Sykes. 

In 1843 Dickens made a voyage to the United States, and de- 
scribed his impressions of the manners, &c., of the Americans in 
a book which is strangely unworthy of his powers. The im- 
pressions themselves are highly unfavourable to the Americans, 
and* in this respect accord with the reports of almost every Eng- 
lish traveller who has given to the world his personal observa- 
tions on the republic. But many of the richest contents of his 
American note-book were transferred to the pages of ' Martin 
Chuzzlewit,' a narrative somewhat resembling ' Nickleby,' which 
appeared in the year just mentioned. This novel is one of the 
finest of his compositions — not the American scenes, perhaps, for 
these have generally an air of exaggeration which injures them; 
but the adventures which occur before and after the hero makes 
his unfortunate and unsuccessful voyage across the Atlantic. Mr. 
Pecksniff, the architect, is a finished hypocrite — the Tartuffe of 
morality, a sort of Mr. Squeers without the brutality. This tale 
contains, too, one of those exquisite personages which Dickens 



CHAP. XIX.] dickens: CHUZZLEWIT CHRISTMAS TALES. 395 

excels in inventing, and placing amidst his dramatis personse, as 
a kind of embodiment of his own gentle, generous, loving heart. 
Who can forget Tom Pinch, old Tom Pinch, with his guileless- 
ness, his oddity, his exhausdess goodness of heart? Opposed to 
this truly delightful creation we have Jonas Chuzzlewit, whose 
mean brutality and small tyranny are finely and consistenUy sus- 
tained. Even in Dickens there are few things finer than the 
episode of the murder committed by Jonas; and the pangs of re- 
morse acting on a base and wolfish nature have seldom been more 
powerfully described. Nor are the comic scenes less varied or 
less excellent; the dinner-party at Todgers's is one of the very 
finest things in the whole range of comic fiction, and immeasurably 
superior even to the far-famed "supper after the manner of the 
ancients" in Smollett's 'Peregrine Pickle.' 

Since the appearance of this rich and rapid succession of noble 
fictions, Dickens seemed to content himself with reposing on the 
laurels he has gained ; having produced no long works, simply 
reminding us of the existence of his undiminished power by pub- 
lishing a series of little festival Christmas tales. Of these, four 
have already appeared, entiUed ' A Christmas Carol in Prose,' 
' The Chimes,' ' The Cricket on the Hearth,' and ' The Batde of 
Life.' They are all admirable for the benevolent genial spirit 
which they express, and display a degree of grace and fancy 
which is in every way worthy of the object for which they were 
written — the noble aim of inspiring the rich and happy with sym- 
pathy and compassion for the poor. They breathe the very 
spirit of Christmas-time, the highest praise which can be given. 
The best of them, as far as the story is concerned, is the first, 
though ' The Chimes' contains an immense power of fantastic 
imagination. They are all very short: the 'Carol' describes the 
conversion, begun by a ghost, and continued by a series of visions, 
embodying the " Past, Present, and Future," of a cold-hearted old 
miser, to the hearty benevolence so suited to Christmas : the 
second is a goblin story : and the third one of those delightful 
glimpses into very humble life which no author can embody like 
Dickens. Even should he write no more, he has done enough to 
deserve the love and admiration of posterity ; his works possess 
the highest and rarest of merits — that of complete originality both 
of matter and of form; his view of life is generous, elevating, genial; 
he sympathises with what is good and noble in all classes and 
conditions alike ; he makes us love our kind, he makes us love 
the exercise of the humbler and more modest virtues, he chroni- 
cles the minor accidents and impressions of life ; his writings, 
though describing the manners of the poorest and lowest classes 
of mankind, contain nothing which can shock the most fastidious 
taste ; and the only things he has held up to ridicule or detesla- 



396 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XIX. 

tion are vice, hypocrisy, or the pretensions of imbecile vulgarity. 
He is an author of whom England may be proud. 

The immense colonial possessions of Great Britain, and par- 
ticularly her colossal empire in the East, combined with the pas- 
sion for travelling so strongly manifested in the nation, have 
created in our literature a class of works which may be con- 
sidered as forming almost a separate department of fiction. These 
are novels which have for their aim the delineation of the man- 
ners, scenery, &c., of distant countries ; and as among these 
works the Oriental are naturally the most splendid and prominent, 
we shall take three which seem the most favourable specimens of 
this subdivision. They are different from each other in form, in 
tone, and in scope, but are equally distinguished for their clever- 
ness and individuality. Of these Oriental novels, then, we se- 
lect, as the most striking examples, ' The History of the Caliph 
Vathek,' by Beckford ; the romance of ' Anastasius,' by Hope; 
and the inimitable ' Hajji Baba,' of Morier. The first of these 
fictions was as wild, strange, and dreamily magnificent, as the 
character and biography of its author — a man almost as rich, as 
splendidly luxurious, and as coldly meditative as the Comte de 
Montecristo, in Dumas' popular story. ' Vathek' is an Arabian 
tale, and was originally published in 1784, in French, being one 
of the rare instances of an Englishman being able to write that 
difficult language with the grace and purity of a native. Being 
afterwards translated by the author into his mother tongue, it 
forms one of the most extraordinary monuments of splendid 
imagery and caustic wit which literature can afford. It is very 
short, and in some respects resembles (at least in its cold sarcasm 
of tone and exquisite refinement of style) the 'Zadig' of Voltaire. 
But 'Vathek' is immeasurably superior in point of imagination, 
and in its singular fidelity to the Oriental colouring and costume. 
Indeed, if we set aside its contemptuous and sneering tone, it 
might pass for a translation of one of ' The Thousand and One 
Nights.' It narrates the adventures of a haughty and effeminate 
monarch, led on by the temptations of a malignant genie and the 
sophistries of a cruel and ambitious mother, to commit all sorts 
of crimes, to abjure his faith, and to offer allegiance to Eblis, the 
Mahommedan Satan, in the hope of seating himself on the throne 
of the Preadamite sultans. The gradual development in his mind 
of sensuality, cruelty, atheism, and insane and Titanic ambition, 
is very finely traced ; the imagery throughout is truly splendid, 
its Eastern gorgeousness tempered and relieved by the sneering 
sarcastic irony of a French Encyclopediste ; and the concluding 
scene soars into the highest atmosphere of grand descriptive 
poetry. Here he descends into the subterranean palace of Eblis, 
where he does homage to the Evil One, and wanders for a while 



CHAP. XIX.3 NOVELS OF FOREIGN LIFE. 397 

among the superhuman splendours of those regions of punish- 
ment. The fancy of genius has seldom conceived anything more 
terrible than "the vast multitude, incessantly passing, who seve- 
rally kept their right hands on their heart, without once regarding 
anything around them. They all avoided each other, and, though 
surrounded by a multitude that no one could number, each wan- 
dered at random, unheedful of the rest, as if alone on a desert 
where no foot had trodden." 

Hope, like Beckford, was a man of refined taste, luxurious 
habits, and possessed of a colossal fortune accumulated in com- 
merce. His work, though very different in form from that of 
Beckford, was not unlike it in some points. ' Anastasius,' pub- 
lished in 1819, purports to be the autobiography of a Greek, who, 
to escape the consequences of his own crimes and villanies of 
every kind, becomes a renegade, and passes through a long series 
of the most extraordinary and romantic vicissitudes. The hero is 
a compound of almost all the vices of his unfortunate and degraded 
nation ; and in his vicissitudes of fortune we see passing before 
us, as in a diorama, the whole social, political, and religious life of 
Turkey and the Morea. The style is elaborate and passionate; 
and this, as well as the character of the principal personage, 

" Link'd with one virtue, and a thousand crimes," 

reminds us, in reading ' Anastasius,' very strongly of the manner 
of Lord Byron. Indeed, this romance is very much what Byron 
would have written in prose — the same splendid, vivid, and ever- 
fresh pictures of the external nature of the most beautiful and in- 
teresting region of the world, the same intensity of passion, the 
same gloomy colouring of unrepenting crime. 

But if the darker side of Oriental nature be presented to us in 
' Vathek' and ' Anastasius,' in the former combined with the 
caustic irony of Voltaire, in the second with the mournful grandeur 
of Byron, the ' Hajji Baba' of Morier will make us ample amends 
in drollery and a truly comic verve. This is the ' Gil Bias' of 
Oriental life. Hajji Baba is a barber of Ispahan, who passes 
through a long but delightfully varied series of adventures, such 
as happen in the despotic and simple governments of the East, 
where the pipe-bearer of one day may become the vizier of the 
next. The hero is an easy, merry good-for-nothing, whose 
dexterity and gaiety it is impossible not to admire, even while we 
rejoice in the punishment which his manifold rascalities draw 
down upon him ; and perhaps there is no work in the world which 
gives so vast, so lively, and so accurate a picture of every grade, 
every phase of Oriental existence. Mr. Morier, who resided 
nearly all his life in various parts of the East, and whose long 
sojourn as British minister in Persia made him profoundly ac- 
34 



1 



398 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. CcHAP. XIX. 

quainted with the character of the people of that country, has 
inost inimitably sustained his imaginary personage. The Hajji 
is not only a thorough Oriental, but intensely Persian, and a 
Persian of the lower class into the bargain; a perfect specimen of 
his nation — the French of the East — gay, talkative, dexterous, 
vain, enterprising, acute, not over-scrupulous, but always amusing. 
The worthy Hajji, in the continuation of the story, comes to 
England in the suite of an embassy from " the asylum of the 
universe;" and perhaps nothing was ever more truly natural and 
comic than the way in which he relates his impressions and ad- 
ventures in this country, his surprise at the condition of women 
among us, his admiration of the "moonfaces," and above all, his 
astonished wonder at the " Coompany," the great enigma to all 
Orientals. 

It now remains only to speak of one species of prose fiction — 
that which has for its subject the manners and personages of ma- 
rine or military life. It may easily be conceived that, the former 
service being most entwined with all the sympathies of the national 
heart, the subdivision of marine novels should be the richest. The 
contrary might be naturally expected in France; and in France 
we accordingly find that though, particularly in modern times, 
numerous novelists have endeavoured to put in a picturesque and 
attractive light the manners and scenes of a sea-life, yet that it is 
the army which has supplied popular literature — the novel, the 
chanson, and the vaudeville — with the types of character most 
identified with the national feeling and predilection. What the 
militaire is to the French public, the sailor is to the English : in 
the songs of the people, on their stage, in their favourite books, 
the "Jack Tar," the "old Agamemnon" who followed Nelson to 
the Nile, is as perpetually recurring and indispensable a personage 
as the " vieux moustache," the "grogneur de la vieille garde," to 
the French. And this is natural enough. Each country is pecu- 
liarly proud of that class to which it owes its brightest and least 
disputable glory : as the Frenchman naturally hugs himself in the 
idea that France is incontestably the first military nation in the 
world, so the Englishman, no less naturally, is peculiarly vain of 
his country's naval achievements; not that in either case the 
former at all forgets or undervalues the naval triumphs of his flag, 
or the latter the military exploits of his ; but simply because 
France is not essentially maritime, and England is, and therefore 
the natives of each attach themselves to that species of glory which 
they consider the peculiar property of their nation. 

At the head of our marine novelists stands Captain Marryat, one 
of the most easy, lively, and truly humorous story-tellers we pos- 
sess. One of the chief elements of his talent is undoubtedly the 
tone of high, effervescent, irrepressible animal spirits which cha- 



CHAP. XIX.] NAVAL AND MILITARY NOVELS. 399 

racterizes everything he lias written. He seems as if lie snt 
down to compose without having formed the least idea of what he 
is going to say, and sentence after sentence seems to flow from his 
pen without thought, without labour, and without hesitation. He 
seems half tipsy with the very gaiety of his heart, and never scru- 
ples to introduce the most grotesque extravagances of character, 
language, and event, provided they are likely to excite a laugh. 
This would produce absurdity and failure as often as laughter, 
were it not that he has a natural tact and judgment in the ludi- 
crous ; and this happy audacity — this hit-or-miss boldness — serves 
him admirably well. Nothing can surpass the liveliness and 
drollery of his 'Peter Simple,' 'Jacob Faithful,' or 'Mr. Mid- 
shipman Easy;' what an inexhaustible gallery of originals has he 
paraded before us ! The English national temperament has a 
peculiar tendency to produce eccentricity of manner, and a sea- 
life in particular seems calculated to foster these oddities till they 
burst into full blow and luxuriance. Marryat's narratives are ex- 
ceedingly inartificial, and often grossly improbable; but we read 
on with gay delight, never thinking of the story, but only solicit- 
ous to follow the droll adventures, and laugh at the still droller 
characters. Smollett himself has nothing richer than Captain 
Kearney, with his lies and innocent ostentation ; Captain To, 
with his passion for pig, his lean wife and her piano ; or than 
Mr. Easy fighting his ship under a green petticoat for want of an 
ensign. This author has also a peculiar talent for the delineation 
of boyish characters : his Faithful and Peter Simple (the "fool of 
the family") not only amuse but interest us ; and in many pas- 
sages he has shown no mean mastery over the pathetic emotions. 
Though superficial in his view of character, he is generally faith- 
ful to reality, and shows an extensive if not very deep knowledge 
of what his old waterman calls " human natur." There are few 
authors more amusing than Marryat ; his books have the effer- 
vescence of champagne. 

Captains Glasscock and Chamier, Mr. Howard and Mr. Trelaw- 
ney, have also produced naval fictions of merit: the two last authors 
have followed a more tragic path than the others mentioned above, 
and have written passages of great power and impressiveness ; but 
iheir works are injured by a too frequent occurrence of exagge- 
rated pictures of blood and horror — a fatal fault, from which they 
might have been warned by the example of Eugene Sue. 

The tales called 'Tom Cringle's Log' and 'The Cruize of the 
Midge' are also works in this kind (though not exclusively naval) 
of striking brilliancy and imaginative power. In these we have a 
most gorgeously coloured and faithful delineation of the luxuriant 
scenery of the West Indian Archipelago, and the manners of the 
Creole and colonist population are reproduced with consummate 
completely satisfies the conditions we have just essayed to estab- 



400 



OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. CcHAP. XX. 



drollery and inexhaustible splendour of language. They were the 
production of Mr. Scott, a gentleman engaged in commerce, and 
personally familiar with the scenes he described; and the admiration 
they excited at their first appearance (anonymously) in ' Black- 
wood's Magazine' caused them to be ascribed to the pen of some 
of the most distinguished of living writers, particularly to that ofj 
John Wilson, the editor of the journal. 

Of the military novels we have but a few words to say: they*] 
are generally inferior to the same class of works in France. Mr.j 
Gleig has recorded in a narrative form many striking episodes of 
that " war of giants" whose most glorious and terrific scenes werei 
the lines of Torres Vedras, the storm of Badajoz, and the field ofj 
Waterloo ; and a number of younger authors, chiefly Irishmen, aai 
Messrs. Lever and Lover, have detailed with their national vivacity I 
the grotesque oddities and gay bravery of their countrymen, whoj 
never appear to so much advantage as on the field of battle. 



CHAPTER XX. 



THE STAGE AND JOURNALISM. 



Comedy in England — Congreve,Farquhar, &c. — Sheridan — The Modern Romans] 
tic Drama — Oratory in England : Burke — Letters of Junius — Modern Theolo.- 
gians : Paley and Butler — Blackstone — Adam Smith — Metaphysics: Stewart 
— Benlham — Periodicals: the Newspaper, the Magazine, and the Review— 1 
The Quarterly, and Blackwood — The Edinburgh, and the New Monthly — Thai 
Westminster — Cheap Periodical Literature. 

Comedy is essentially the expression not of Life, but of SocietyA 
It does not deal with the passions, but with the afi"ectalions and| 
lollies of our nature : it belongs, therefore, particularly to a highly] 
civilized and artificial state of existence. Many of Shakspeare'sj 
most humorous creations are comic in the highest degree, but theyj 
are not in any sense comedies: ihey are something infinitely more 
elevated, more profound, more far-reaching; but they are not come- 
dies. Exquisitely humorous as they are, the humour is not in] 
them the primary element, the unmixed subject-matter of these; 
inimitable delineations ; it is united with tenderness, romantic pas- 
sion, exhaustless poetic fancy; and therefore we call them Plays.J 
Indeed, it may almost be maintained that humour is not the true^ 
element of comedy at all — that is, of comedy properly so named. 
Wit is the essence, the life-blood of comedy, and wit is as differ- 
ent from humour as from tragic passion. Wit is the negative, the^ 



CUAP. XX.] COMEDY IN ENGLAND. 401 

destructive process — humour the positive, the reconstructive. Wit 
is an analytic, humour a synthetic operation. The latter indeed 
is so demonstrably a higher power of the mind, that it includes the 
former, but with the addition of something more, and something, 
too, infinitely higher in its source and nature. The humorist must 
possess wit; but he must also possess tenderness, sympathy,yot;e. 
In the language of algebra we may formulise it thus : wit + sym- 
pathy = humour. And in proportion as the affections are an en- 
dowment of our nature far more elevated than the mere activity of 
our comparative or perceptive faculties (in the unusual delicacy 
and sensibility of which consists that power we call wit), in exactly 
the same measure is humour superior to wit. We may be proud 
to remember that humour is the distinguishing feature of the Eng- 
lish national intellect, and the peculiar stamp of individuality which 
marks our literature. This circumstance alone would suffice to 
account for the undeniable superiority of our national literature 
over that of all other civilized countries, in every point — of depth, 
of grandeur, of variety, of indestructible vitality. 

This being granted, it will not be difficult to discover what are 
the social conditions most necessary to the production of a bril- 
liant school of comedy in a given nation. As the stage in general 
must ever be the reflection of the life, the character, the colouring 
of the country and epoch in which it appears, comedy must be 
the offspring of a highly artificial, corrupt, and intellectual era. 
As its pabulum, its subject-matter is folly, its aim being 

" To feed with varied fools the eternal jest," 

it may be most certainly expected to flourish at a time when 
civilization has not advanced so far as to obliterate those strong 
class-distinctions which sharply mark the professions, habits, 
language, and manners of mankind, and at the same time when 
those elements are upon the point of being mingled into one un- 
varied mass. We can have no pure comedy now, because the 
manners of all classes, like their dress, have come to be so uni- 
form that there remains nothing of conventional, of universally 
intelligible, sufficiently salient for the comic dramatist to lay hold 
of. The "frac noir" — the true equalized power of the nineteenth 
century — has leveled all men, like death. The follies, vanities, 
and eccentricities of course exist as much as ever, but they have 
been throivn inward ; and if we seek for oddities now, we shall 
find not classes but individuals, and, if faithfully represented on 
the stage, they resemble not types familiar to every spectator, but 
caricatures, often apparently extravagant. The consequence of 
all this is, that we have no comedy, but we have a vaudeville — an 
excellent thing in its way, but very different from its predecessor. 
In England the reign of Charles II. was the period which most 

34* 



402 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. CcHAP. XX. 

lish, just as in France the reign of Louis XIV. The first-men- 
tioned epoch produced Congreve, Wycherley, and Farquhar ; the 
second Moliere and Regnard. In the writings of the three great 
English wits there is seldom any trace of huniojir, and therefore 
nothing can be more difTerent from Shakspeare. Wit is the 
reisfning element, and witty dialogue perhaps was never so com- 
pletely exhibited as in these admirable comedies. They are not 
natural in an absolute, though highly so in a relative sense: they 
are not true to universal but to local nature ; or rather we may 
say that the nature of their day was an unnatural nature. They 
were written, not for the court, nor for the people, in the true sense 
of the word, but for the Town; and they are inimitable for intense 
vivacity of sparkling dialogue, for the richest abundance of odd 
and extravagant character, for ingenuity of plot (generally, how- 
ever, a mechanical ingenuity, arising rather from disguises, mis- 
takes of persons, and errors of the senses, than from the play of 
passion, or the deceptions caused by vanity and self-love), and 
above all for an air of inexhaustible high spirits and gaiety. In 
all these works the chief defect is the shocking tone of immorality 
which pervades them. The characters are nothing but an un- 
varied crowd of sharpers, seducers, prostitutes, and butts: but it 
is fair to remark that in reading these dramas we seem to lay aside 
all our stricter notions of moral duty : as Charles Lamb acutely 
remarks, we seem to have got into a new world, where the old- 
fashioned distinctions of right and wrong have no currency. In 
point of art, their chief defect is allied to their principal merits : 
it arises partly from the restless and incessant sparkle of the dia- 
logue, which ever glitters with an unappeasable activity, like the 
blinding ripple of a noonday sea; and, secondly, from the want 
of intellectual distinction between the personages ; for the fools, 
dupes, and coxcombs are quite as brilliant and smart in their 
repartees as the professed and ostensible wits of the piece. Every- 
thing is epigram and point; and though in many of these plays 
there are occasional touches of nature exquisitely true, delicate, 
and poignant, and even whole scenes which may serve as models 
of liveliness not inconsistent with probability, the general cha- 
racter of this school is certainly unsolid, and absolutely wearying 
from excess of sparkle and epigram. Assuredly no nation has 
produced anything in this artificial vein finer and more complete 
than the comedies of ' Love for Love,' 'The Way of the World,' 
'The Man of Mode,' 'The Country Wife,' 'The Confederacy,' 
and 'The Provoked Wife.' The popularity of these works was 
enormous: comedies and pamphlets formed nearly the sum total 
of the lighter literature of that age ; and though, not having their 
foundation in the deeper recesses of the human heart, they are 
now comparatively neglected, no man can have a true idea of the 



CHAP. XX.] COMEDY OF CHARLES II. 403 

perfections of our noble language who has not made acquaintance 
with this class of writers. What Hazlilt says of Congreve is 
generally applicable to all the rest : " His style is inimitable, nay, 
perfect. It is the highest model of comic dialogue. Every sen- 
tence is replete with sense and satire, conveyed in the most 
polished and pointed terms. Every page presents a shower of 
brilliant conceits, is a tissue of epigrams in prose, is a new triumph 
of wit, a new conquest over dulness. The fire of artful raillery 
is nowhere else so well kept up. This style, which he was 
almost the first to introduce, and which he carried to the utmost 
pitch of classical refinement, reminds one exactly of Collins's 
description of wit as opposed to humour, — 

'Whose jewels in his crisped hair 
Are placed each other's light to share.' " 

The first of this remarkable class was Etherege, and the last 
Farquhar ; though Sheridan (after a long interval, during which 
the comic stage had obtained a quite difl'erent direction) seems to 
have revived it for a moment in all its brilliancy. The chronology 
of the principal names among them was as follows : Sir George 
Etherege, born in 1636, died in 1683 ; his best comedy 'The Man 
of Mode.' Wycherley, the author of ' The Plain Dealer,' a comedy 
somewhat resembling 'The Misanthrope' and 'The Country 
Wife,' which may be advantageously compared with 'L'Ecole des 
Femmes,' born in 1640, died in 1715. Congreve, the greatest of 
them all, celebrated not only as a comic dramatist, but as the author 
of The Mourning Bride,' a tragedy in the dry classical French taste, 
but a work of great merit, 1670 — 1729 : his finest comedies are 
' Love for Love,' ' The Old Bachelor,' and ' The Double Dealer.' 
Sir John Vanbrugh (1672 — 1726) comes next, a great architect 
as well as dramatic artist, for he designed Blenheim. His plays 
are of a somewhat coarser texture than those of Congreve, but 
superior in a certain rich and genial glow : his masterpieces are 
'The Relapse,' 'The Provoked Wife,' 'The Confederacy,' and 
he left unfinished the admirable fragment afterwards completed 
by Cibber under the title of ' The Provoked Husband.' The last 
of these authors was Farquhar, born in 1678, and who died at 
the early age of 29. His best known comedies are ' The Con- 
stant Couple,' 'The Beaux' Stratagem,' and 'The Recruiting Of- 
ficer,' all of which, though sufficiendy immoral, exhibit less of 
that cool heartless depravity which marks the productions of this 
class. 

By one of those revolutions of taste — regular as the seasons, or 
as the oscillations of the tide in the physical world — which take 
place in literature generally and in every department of literature 
in particular, comedy in England acquired, after the brilliant 
period of which we have been speaking, a direction toward senii- 



404 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. {^CHAP. XX. 

mentalism. The writings of Slerne very much contributed to 
this tendency, and Cohnan, Cumberland, and most of the modern 
writers for the stage endeavoured to unite the pathetic and the 
broadly humorous. This class was begun by Steele; and these 
comedies have lost the peculiar charm of gaiety, refined satire, and 
wit, without acquiring anything in exchange: the moral and senti- 
mental parts are mawkish, tedious, and affected, and the laughable 
ones degenerate into gross farce and caricature. But the true old 
comedy, the admirable English comedy of Congreve and Wycher- 
ley, received a bright and momentary resuscitation in the person 
of Sheridan. This'wonderful Irishman — as perfect an embodi- 
ment of the intellect of his country as his biographer Moore — was 
one of the political and literary comets of his day. Without fixity 
of purpose, without learning, without any of that political influence 
(the most important of all in a constitutional country like England) 
which arises from personal and moral respectability, he obtained 
as a parliamentary orator a brilliant though useless reputation in 
that age of giants when the eloquence of Chatham was yet ring- 
ing in the national ear, giving animation to the struggles of Pitt 
and Fox. As a dramatic author Sheridan produced three works 
which will ever be considered masterpieces in their diff'erent styles 
— the two comedies entitled ' The School for Scandal' and ' The 
Rivals,' and the inimitable dramatic caricature of ' The Critic' 
The first of these is a regular comedy of intrigue, the persons all 
of the upper ranks of life: the dialogue is one incessant sparkle 
of the finest and most polished repartee ; and though the moral of 
the piece — the unmasking of a cold-hearted hypocrite and pre- 
tender to virtue, and the forgiveness of his brother, a gay good- 
natured rake — is not established but at the expense of some dan- 
gerous-sophistries, and the confounding of virtue with hypocrisy, 
and the excusing of vice by the plea of generosity, this comedy 
is one of the triumphs of the English scene. Many of the situa- 
tions are so exquisitely comic, though a large portion of the piece 
is passed in talk which does not advance the action, the habit of 
scandal and tale-bearing is so admirably ridiculed, and the tone 
of the whole is so brilliant and refined, that it is equally delight- 
ful when read or when acted. It contains much profound satire 
on the corruptions of society, as brilliantly expressed, though 
less animated by bitterness, as in the ' Figaro' of Beaumarchais, 
to which work it bears some little resemblance; but in point of 
exquisite finish of form, in consummate elegance of manner, it is 
equal to Congreve himself — the highest possible praise. The 
other comedy we have mentioned — ''J'he Rivals' — depicts adven- 
tures of a broader cast, and characters less exclusively taken from 
polished society. ' The School for Scandal' seldom excites more 
than a smile, while ' The Rivals' keeps the spectators in a broad 



CHAP. XX.] MODERN ROMANTIC DRAMA. 405 

laugh. Notliing can be happier than the liglit but masterly sketches 
of character in this exquisite piece: the self-willed, blustering Sir 
Anthony; the generous Irish fortune-hunter; the sentimental novel- 
reading Lydia, who can see no happiness but in disguises, per- 
secuted attachments, and elopements ; the inimitable Mrs. Mala- 
prop, with her exquisitely good bad English ; and the never-to- 
be-forgotten Bob Acres. ' The Critic' is one of that numerous 
class of pieces which contains a double action — the scenes between 
the author, his friends and critics, and the rehearsal of the tragedy. 
It is impossible to say which is the best or most witty part of this 
comedy, the dialogue between Dangle, an empty-headed theatrical 
busybody ; Sneer, the very concentrated essence of critical bitter- 
ness ; Puff, the bold, impudent literary quack; and Sir Fretful 
Plagiary (a portrait of Cumberland), all alive with sore irritable 
sensibility ; or the admirable extravagance of the "tragedy in the 
Shakspearian manner." 

The subsequent history of the English stage is very soon re- 
lated, and not very exhilarating. In comedy the German senti- 
mental spirit to which we have alluded gradually gained ground: 
common types of patriotism, generosity, vulgar burlesque, and yet 
more vulgar elegance, have been reproduced usque ad nauseam. 
We have been sickened with never-failing tirades about the moral 
dignity of the British merchant, the noble virtue of the British 
farmer, and the valour of the British soldier and sailor, who is 
always represented, in order to "tickle the ears of the ground- 
lings," as able to thrash three Frenchmen — and all this in a style 
as vulgar and conventional as the ideas. Nevertheless, it would 
be unjust to supjjose that there are not many scenes, and even 
some characters, in the plays of Cumberland, Colman, Reynolds, 
&c., exhibiting a power to do better things: but the general tendency 
of comic drama with us, as in France, has been towards the vaude- 
ville — with this difference, that the vaudeville is essentially and pe- 
culiarly a French creation, and therefore a valuable type of French 
art; whereas in England it is either servilely copied or coarsely 
caricatured from that charming production of the French theatre. 

The most intensely national type of the English drama is the 
romantic drama — the school of Shakspeare. It may easily be 
conceived that some attempts should have been made to revive so 
admirable and national a mode of composition. Perhaps these 
essays form the only sound, healthy, and at all promising class of 
modern theatrical writing : but even this class has a forced and 
hot-bed air, and is kept alive rather by the taste of a few than by 
the eager sympathy of the public generally. These works are 
imitative; and, however beautiful they sometimes may be, they 
confer pleasure rather by recalling to us those forms of literature 
which we look back upon with the greatest pride and veneration, 



406 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XX. 

than by their unassisted merits. The romantic plays of Miss 
Baillie, and particularly of Sheridan Knowles (the most success- 
ful of our modern dramatists), are always interesting, and in some 
passages even excellent; but their invariable adoption of the 
Elizabethan diction not only produces a painful impression of the 
writer being afraid to trust purely to his own unassisted powers 
of poetry and passion, but carries also with it an air of sham, of 
mimicry — a confounding of the accident with the substance. Ad- 
mirable as is the diction of that wonderful epoch, the diction is 
not the essential thing : at all events it was the natural style of 
that day, only elevated, of course, and glorified by genius ; whereas 
now an imitation of it must ever wear a pitiable air of factitious- 
ness and affectation. Many of Miss Baillie's ' Plays on the Pas- 
sions,' Knowles' 'Hunchback,' 'Wife,' ' Virginius,' and others, 
might be cited with great praise, but with an expression of just 
regret that they should be so injured by the patchwork air of their 
diction, in which modern words and ideas jar so strangely with 
the tone of that glorious, easy, fanciful dialogue, so hallowed in 
our memory. Two or three men of an original and independent 
way of thinking have written dramas (designed I'ather for reading 
than representation) in which this defect has been "reformed," 
as the player says in ' Hamlet,' " indifferent well." Mr. Talfourd 
has composed several pieces in which, though the style is a little 
too perceptibly modelled upon that of Ford and Beaumont and 
Fletcher, this air of imitation is compensated by the pure ele- 
gance of design, and the simple, direct, elevated pathos, and some- 
thing too of an ideal severity reflected from the Greek dramatists. 
His tragedy of 'Ion' is, indeed, a refined and elevated work, of con- 
summate finish in its parts, and breathing the lofty tenderness and 
all-embracing humanity of sentiment which characterises the philo- 
sophic poetry of Wordsworth. Henry Taylor has essayed, and with 
no mean success, to revive, in a dramatic form, the picturesque and 
stormy life of the fourteenth century, in his noble work on the 
subject of ' Philip van Artevelde,' the brewer-king of Ghent. 
The picture (a vast and animated one) of the struggle between 
the infant liberties of the burgess class in Flanders and the op- 
pressive and haughty feudalism is delineated with no ordinary 
power; and the central figure of this vast panorama is a grand 
and ideal conception, whose chief fault is its want of accordance 
with the conceivable existence of such a character in so rude 
and fierce an age. But ' Artevelde' is not a drama, but a drama- 
tic poem — full of power and beauty, it is true, but totally incapa- 
ble of representation ; and though ' Ion' is interesting and success- 
ful on the stage, it is by no means a work addressed (as every 
real drama must infallibly be) to the tastes, sympathies, and 
comprehension of the multitude. 



CHAP. XX.] ORATORY. 407 

Political disquisition, whether spoken or written, has in England 
a very striking peculiarity of tone : it differs from the mode of dis- 
cussion adopted in other countries at least as markedly as the 
popular and national character of Great Britain differs from that 
of any civilized state in ancient or modern history. The German 
dreams of everything, the Frenchman talks of everything, the Eng- 
lishman reasons of everything. The Frenchman acts often without 
thinking, the German is too occupied with his theories either to rea- 
son or to act, the Englishman thinks deliberately and acts decidedly. 
In France we find in general strong attachment to what is so expres- 
sively designated by the English term " claptrap.''^ There is no 
country which has so long retained a taste for those worn-out topics 
of school-boy declamation, that shallow classicism of allusion, 
which swells the period with the names of Brutus, of Aristides, and 
of 'I'hemistocles — none where the threadbare pedantry of personi- 
fication and prosopopoeia has become so engrained, as it were, into 
the national style. This was of course a consequence of the Revo- 
lution of 1789, a period of carnival masquing, when 
" Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, virorum," 

danced through speeches, pamphlets, and proclamations, " in all 
the mazes of metaphorical confusion." English public speaking, 
at the bar or in parliament, is emineittly and essentially practical ; 
and a British audience, whether in a public meeting, in the 
Houses of Lords and Commons, or a jury in a court of justice, 
while it will listen with patience to a cogent and practical rea- 
soning, however inelegantly expressed, has no mercy upon mere 
flowery rhetoric or vain general declamation. Nothing is more 
fatal to eloquence, in its highest sense, than the air of being elo- 
quent; and the object of all public speaking and writing being 
solely and simply to convince or persuade, it is self-evident that 
that orator or writer must be the best who produces the greatest 
practical result. The Greeks thoroughly understood this, as the 
English have done; and there is, consequently, in the oratory of 
both nations, a singular resemblance in point of directness, mus- 
cularity of expression, and practical application. The speeches 
of Chatham, Pitt, Fox, and Wyndham are perhaps the finest 
monuments of our parliamentary eloquence, and those of Erskine 
of forensic oratory ; and when in reading them, imperfectly re- 
ported as they often are, we are sometimes at a loss to explain 
the fact how they could have produced such effect as they really 
did, we forget that the very simplicity and absence of parade, 
which strikes us as meagre and colourless, must have been, at 
the time when they were delivered, a main source of their resistless 
power. In general it will be found that those speeches which 
read best are by no means those which were most effective when 



408 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XX. 

spoken. Our forensic oratory is generally marked by a singular 
sobriety and a careful exclusion of all rapturous and rhetorical 
enthusiasm ; and therefore the pathetic passages, so rarely and 
sparingly introduced, have all the power over our sympathies 
derivable from the impressiveness of subdued, restrained, in- 
voluntary passion. Chatham, Pitt, and Fox, immeasurably supe- 
rior as they were, as parliamentary speakers, to their illustrious 
contemporary, Edmund Burke, were undoubtedly inferior to him 
in vastness of mind and in grandeur of genius ; and yet the latter 
was seldom listened to with even moderate patience in the House 
of Commons : and the reason is, that the former were consum- 
mate debaters, practical speakers; while the latter was the elo- 
quent expounder of a philosophy too ethereal, too abstract, too 
sublime, for that practical and common sense atmosphere. As a 
political theorist, as a speculator on the history, character, and 
tendency of the British constitution, as the analyser of its prin- 
ciples, as the historian of its past and the prophet of its future, 
Burke occupies a place in the political and literary history of 
England which is quite peculiar. His speeches and pamphlets 
on the destinies of the tirst French Revolution, and of the then 
infant liberties of the United States, are perhaps as wonderful for 
their sagacity, their penetration, and for that intensity of predictive 
power — 

"the vision and the faculty divine" — 

as they are admirable for the splendid eloquence of their expres- 
sion. They will form for ever the favourite models of style to 
the student of historical literature, to the orator, to the thinker; 
and are among the most signal examples of that power by which, 
under the magic influence of Genius, 

"Old Experience doth attain 
To something like prophetic strain." 

But the most remarkable figure in the political drama of this 
period is that mysterious personage, the " Iron Mask" of modern 
history, the admirable writer who launched his fierce diatribes 
under the name of "Junius." The authorship of these letters is 
one of the few enigmas which time and investigation have not 
perfectly solved. Internal and circumstantial evidence points so 
clearly to Sir Philip Francis as the writer of these compositions, 
that tnoral certainty is undoubtedly arrived at. Perhaps the 
literature of no country in the world can offer a finer example of 
intense, unscrupulous, yet always elegant and dignified invective. 
Every sentence is weighty with meaning, and pointed with the 
sharpest and most polished sarcasm ; and the air of honest indig- 
nant patriotism, which the author has so studiously and carefully 
preserved, makes us forget, as we read, the atrocious venom of 



CHAP. XX.] THEOLOGIANS. 409 

party-spirit, and the unjustifiable attacks on private character, 
which abound throughout this able but flagitious collection of let- 
ters. 

We have devoted a short chapter to those great divines whose 
eloquence and learning have made them the fathers of the Angli- 
can church ; who are our Chrysostoras and Augustines, or rather 
our Fenelons, Pascals, and Bossuets. The epoch of which we 
are now treating was fertile in illustrious men, whose writings, 
consecrated, like those of Barrow, Taylor, South and Fuller, to 
the service of Protestantism, were marked with ditferences pro- 
portioned to the age in which they wrote. They are not rich 
treasuries of failh, eloquence, enthusiasm, and boundless erudition 
— they are demonstrations of evidence, and answers to objections; 
they are not the production of the imagination, but of the reason. 
Among these writers the names of Paley and Butler are the most 
prominent. The former, in an extensive cycle of works, has 
investigated, first, the grounds and principles of moral philosophy 
generally, he has then advanced to the great outlines of morality 
and government, thence to the consideration of the probabilities 
for and against the truth of the Christian history, and lastly he 
has given us a detailed examination of the writings of St. Paul. 
In these works, the ' Moral Philosophy,' the ' Evidences of 
Christianity' (chiefly intended as a refutation of Hume's plausible 
objections to the truth of the evangelic history), and the ' Horae 
Paulinae,' we remark an acuteness of reasoning which has rarely 
been equalled, combined with a style so easy, familiar, and natural, 
that we are sometimes blinded to the sophistry which the author's 
inimitable air of bonhomie and good faith is occasionally em- 
ployed to mask. His theory of moral sentiment is based upon 
the doctrine of self-interest ; a doctrine to which, hovi'ever reluc- 
tantly, all speculators must sooner or later recur: and in his 
' Natural Theology,' when he traces, through the whole creation, 
and particularly in the constitution of organized bodies, the proofs 
of a presiding wisdom, benevolence, and power in the Creator, it 
is impossible not to admire the extent of his knowledge of nature 
(particularly of physiology), the familiar appropriateness of the 
illustrations he selects, and above all the complete absence of all 
pedantry and scientific terminology. 

Butler, Bishop of Lichfield (who was born in 1692 and died 
in 1752), confined himself to the investigation of the degree of 
anterior probability which would lead us to assign to such a 
revelation as that of Christianity such a character as we find it 
to possess. Given the phenomenon of a natural religion, he de- 
mands what might be expected to be the moral character of a 
revelation tVom the nature of the case; and he shows it to coin- 
cide exactly with the revelation which we do possess. This 
35 



410 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XX. 

great work is entitled ' The Analogy of Natural and Revealed 
Religion ;' and is one of the finest examples which literature can 
produce of close, clear, candid, and almost mathematical demon- 
stration. Of course Butler's work treats only of the preliminary 
probabilities of the question ; and does not enter into the examina- 
tion, on historical, critical, and philological grounds, of that mass 
of evidence which the New Testament contains, and which forms 
the basis of our belief in the facts of the Christian miracles. 
That task is executed partly by Paley, and partly by that vast 
cloud of commentators, such as Clarke, Prideaux, Lardner, &c., 
whose learning, industry, and candour do such honour to the 
reformed church of England. 

Though perhaps they may be considered as scarcely entering 
into the plan of our work, we think it our duty not to omit alto- 
gether the names of Blackslone, Adam Smith, Stewart, and Ben- 
tham ; Blackstone having been the first to treat in a popular and 
untechnical manner of the history and nature of the laws of Eng- 
land; Smith, the first systematic investigator of the science of 
political economy ; Stewart, the most distinguished of modern 
British metaphysicians ; and Bentham, the profound searcher 
into the theory of government and legislation. 

Judge Blackstone was the first of our lawyers who possessed 
a sufiiciendy strong tincture of letters to be able to give an elegant 
and readable epitome of the history of English law, rejecting the 
dry and repulsive technicality which characterises the profound and 
admirable Institutes of our great legists. Coke, Fortescue, Little- 
ton, and Selden. The enormous mass of information buried, far 
.out of the reach of any but the unwearied professional student, in 
the ponderous tomes of our old judges and reporters, Blackstone 
presented, in 1765, in a form elegant, accessible, and interesting: 
and when we reflect upon the vastness and complication of our 
legislative and executive system, and the thousand elements, 
Roman, mediaeval, municipal, feudal, and parliamentary, which 
combine to form that wonderful compound, the British constitu- 
tion, it is impossible to express too warmly the gratitude which 
not only every Englishman, but every civilized man, should feel 
towards Blackstone for having placed, in an intelligible and ac- 
cessible form, the history of what can never be devoid either of 
philosophical interest, or influence upon the destinies of human 
liberty. 

Adam Smith's famous ' Wealth of Nations' was the first attempt 
towards laying down, on a great scale, the principles of political 
economy. He was the first to demonstrate the fundamental 
axioms of commerce, manufactures, and the division of labour. 
This great work has been justly reproached with want of system- 
atic order and completeness of arrangement : but it is distinguished 



CHAP. XX.] METAPHYSICS — BENTHAM. 411 

for the soundness of its views in many points exceedingly import- 
ant in themselves, and which, before Smith's time, had never been 
satisfactorily investigated : as, for example, the division of labour, 
the theory of rent, and the principles of advantageous international 
commerce. It is, also, admirable for the singular clearness and 
appropriateness of the illustrations employed to exemplify the 
various parts of the argument; and though more recent labourers 
in the great field of statistics and political economy — such as Mal- 
thus, Ricardo, Mill, Senior, MacCulloch — have profitably culti- 
vated many portions of the field. Smith deserves the credit of 
having first broken up the surface, and shown the extent and fer- 
tility of the ground. 

In metaphysical science it is, we fear, incontrovertible that Great 
Britain is less distinguished than in most other branches of human 
knowledge : at least that she is incontestably inferior to Germany. 
It is singular enough that metaphysics have been more cultivated 
in Scotland than in England — nay, that the Scottish intellect ap- 
pears to possess a peculiar tendency and aptitude to this kind of 
disquisition. In the present age, at least, it is Edinburgh which 
has produced the most distinguished of the metaphysicians of 
Great Britain; though Scotland has no names to show in any de- 
gree comparable, we will not say to Leibnitz and Kant, but even 
to Fichte, Schelling, or Hegel. Perhaps it will not be unjust to 
take Dugald Stewart as the most marked name among our modern 
school of metaphysicians — at least since the date of Chillingworth, 
Hobbes, Locke, and Berkeley. 

There remains another and most important branch of know- 
ledge — only the more important from its very difficulty, which 
has deterred men of adequate powers from concentrating upon it 
their systematic attention. This is the science of legislation, and 
the theory of reward and punishment. Jeremy Bentham was 
undoubtedly the first among us to enter upon this new and unex- 
plored career. The eccentricity of his manners, his simple and 
unworldly enthusiasm, the boldness and novelty of his theories, — 
all this, combined with the oddity of his style, the grotesque pe- 
dantry of his language, the strange uncouth terminology which he 
thought it necessary to invent for his science, and, above all, the 
repulsive dryness and complexity of a multitude of definitions, 
limitations, divisions, and subdivisions, — all these things tended 
to blind his countrymen to the importance of his political and 
juridical theories and reasonings. England is eminently the coun- 
try of the practical; and the most fatal character which a philo- 
sophical investigator can acquire is that of a visionary or an 
enthusiast. Benlham's writings were distinguished by so much 
novelty in the matter, and such fantastic oddity in the manner, 
that they were received by the general public of England with 



412 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XX. 

considerable distrust, and even hostility; and his reputation, now 
deservedly high and every day rising still higher, has met with 
very curious vicissitudes. His theories, having gradually obtained 
a great reputation on the Continent, and particularly in France, 
have been divested of the strange and repulsive peculiarities of 
their author's manner, and have come back to us embodied in 
clear [and philosophical language. Thus Bentham's fame had 
made the tour of Europe before it was firmly established in the 
country of its birth. His deductions are often made with almost 
geometrical severity: and if men were pieces of mechanism, and 
subject to no disturbances in their conduct from causes too capri- 
cious and irregular to be appreciated by science, his principles 
would be not only applicable, but would produce the effect which 
he hoped would result from them, in the annihilation of crime, 
poverty, and oppression. But we do not calculate so logically as 
Bentham supposes ; and the greater part of our actions are dic- 
tated, in the first instance, not by pure reason, or a balancing of 
the good and evil that will accrue from a particular line of conduct 
in given circumstances, but rather by passion, prejudice, or an in- 
distinct interest, which we afterwards endeavour to harmonise 
with the deductions of moral logic. Bentham's life was very 
long, active, and benevolent; he was born in 1748, and lived to 
the great age of ninety-four. The ' Popular Fallacies,' the ' Essay 
on Codification,' the ' Defence of Usury,' are deservedly held to 
be monuments of admirably-combined industry, acuteness, and 
originality. 

Journalism — that remarkable and distinctive feature of modern 
literature — has been cultivated in England with all the activity 
that might have been predicted from the general intelligence and 
civilization of the country, from the perfect freedom of discussion 
which our nation has so long enjoyed, and also from the popular 
nature of our government, which gives every citizen a strong per- 
sonal interest in all political questions. Our journals, of every 
kind, have been generally distinguished from those of other coun- 
tries by two or three striking peculiarities. Till recently, every 
journal, whether newspaper, magazine, or review, was perfecdy 
miscellaneous in its contents, discussing political questions, giving 
criticisms on books or works of art, reporting the progress of 
science, — in short, reflecting the multiform interests of society. 
Our journals were, indeed, what Hamlet tells us actors are — "the 
abstract and brief chronicles of the time." This was owing in 
some measure to the expense of books and publications in Eng- 
land, which has always been enormous as compared with other 
countries, and which rendered it impossible for ordinary readers 
to subscribe to many periodicals ; so that each was obliged to be 
in some measure encyclopaedic. But as the field of curiosity has 



CHAP. XX.] PERIODICALS NEWSPAPERS. 413 

enlarged, special journals, each devoted to some particular class 
of information, have become more numerous, and naturally at 
the same time much cheaper. Another peculiarity of English 
journalism is the strict incognito which it has always been the 
fashion for the contributors to preserve. This proceeds, perhaps, 
from the reserve of the English character; or from the fear of 
personal interest interfering with the impartiality of the writer : 
and all the attempts that have been made (with what possible 
hope of advantage is not quite clear) to introduce among us the 
practice, so universal in France and Germany, of the writer 
signing his name at the foot of his composition, have been uni- 
formly unsuccessful. This incognito, however, applies only to 
criticism and political disquisition ; for the writers who contribute 
poetry and fiction to our journals do not think it necessary to 
preserve the incognito. 

By the word Newspaper we understand, in England, a gazette 
of politics, general information, and advertisements, appearing in 
a sheet or sheets at intervals, in general not greater than a week. 
The Magazine (a term peculiar to England) is a miscellaneous 
periodical, published for the most part monthly, containing ori- 
ginal disquisitions, prose fiction or poetry, and generally of an 
amusing and varied character. The Review is a publication of 
a much more grave and ambitious cast : it contains no admixture 
of original narrative or poetical matter, but is a series of essays, 
or articles, ostensibly criticisms of the works whose titles are 
placed at the head of the disquisition. But these articles are by 
no means, necessarily, mere critiques of the works apropos of 
which they purport to be written. The latter are frequently 
quite insignificant in themselves ; but are taken merely as the 
peg upon which is hung a general, and often admirably-written, 
disquisition on the subject in question. 

The history of journalism in England coincides, in the date of 
its origin, in its general characteristics and vicissitudes, and in 
the causes which have contributed, at particular periods, to ad- 
vance or retard its development, with the annals of this im- 
portant branch of activity in other countries of Europe. All the 
great political parties have their special organs in the periodical 
press ; and perhaps the best way of giving an idea of this kind 
of writing in England will be by classing the most eminent and 
popular journals under the respective opinions advocated in their 
pages. In- a constitutional government, composed, like that of 
England, of three distinct elements, there will naturally be three 
principal shades of party feeling ; the Tories, or advocates for 
tlie status in quo of the constitution, who dread the encroach- 
ments of popular opinion, and are enthusiastic maintainers of 
monarchism and aristocracy— Conservatives, in short. The chief 

35* 



414 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [ciIAP. XX. 

organs of this powerful, wealthy, and intelligent party (which, 
however, is generally deficient in activity, and acts mainly by 
its weight — its vis inertix) are, among the reviews, ' The Quar- 
terly,' and, among the magazines, ' Blackwood's' and ' Eraser's.' 
The first-mentioned work is undoubtedly one of great influence 
and importance; the contributions are admirably written, and are 
generally by the most distinguished men of the day. This jour- 
nal was established at the very agitated period of 1809, to coun- 
teract the danger of those liberal opinions which were at that 
time almost menacing the integrity of the Constitution; and it 
was for a long time conducted by William GifTord, the translator 
of Juvenal, and the author of the ' Baviad' and 'Ma3viad,' two of 
the most bitter, powerful, and resistless literary satires which 
modern days have produced. GiflTord was a self-taught man, 
who raised himself, by dint of almost superhuman exertions and 
admirable integrity, to a high place among the literary men of 
his age. Distinguished as a satirist, as a translator of satires, 
and as the editor of several of the illustrious but somewhat neg- 
lected dramatists of the Elizabethan age, his writings, admirable 
for sincerity, good sense, and learning, were also strongly tinged 
with bitterness and personality. Many other distinguished sup- 
porters of Conservative doctrines were contributors to ' The Quar- 
terly,' — Croker ; the witty, brilliant, sarcastic Canning ; and, more 
recently, Southey. This journal is at present conducted by Lock- 
hart, Walter Scott's son-in-law and literary executor. 

Advocating the same doctrines, though in language less solemn 
and dictatorial, ' Blackwood's Magazine' must be considered as 
having played, and as long likely to play, a very prominent part. 
It is exceedingly miscellaneous in its contents ; and in its pages 
some of the most distinguished writers of poetry and fiction have 
made their debuts. ' Blackwood' must be held to have done good 
service to pure taste by the publication of a rich and masterly se- 
ries of translations (chiefly by Hay, Merivale, &c.) of the Greek 
epigrams — a very peculiar and exquisite class of productions. It 
was in ' Blackwood,' too, that Warren made his first appearance 
before the public, as the anonymous author of the 'Passages from 
the Diary of a late Physician' and the novel of ' Ten Thousand 
a-Year.' The sketches of sea-life and West-Indian scenery, men- 
tioned by us in a preceding chapter with very high commendation, 
first appeared in this periodical under the titles of 'Tom Cringle's 
Log' and ' The Cruize of the Midge.' It would be tedious were 
we to attempt to enumerate all the powerful, splendid, or humor- 
ous narratives, all the genial and eloquent political biographies 
(such as those of Pitt and Burke), or all the penetrating and ani- 
mated reviews of books and systems, which have appeared in 
' Blackwood' since its establishment in 1814. We will only ad- 



CHAP. XX.] THE EDINBURGH NEW MONTHLY. 415 

vert to a series of contributions so truly original in form, and so 
happy in execution, that they may be considered as constituting an 
absolute and peculiar species. We allude to the exquisitely hu- 
morous and eloquent ' Noctes Ambrosiana;,' a collection of imagi- 
nary conversations between the supposed editor and contributors 
(real persons under fictitious and exaggerated masks), in which all 
the topics of the day are passed in review with a singular union of 
profound speculation, fervid eloquence, and the broadest and most 
extravagant gaiety. These are supposed to be chiefly the compo- 
sition of John Wilson, long the editor of the journal, a man of 
almost universal accomplishments, and celebrated as a moral phi- 
losopher, as a poet, a critic, a publicist, a humorist, and a sports- 
man. In his ' Isle of Palms,' and ' City of the Plague,' Wilson 
shows himself to be a poet of no mean order, following the peculiar 
school of Wordsworth : in his ' Margaret Lyndsay,' and ' Lights 
and Shadows of Scottish Life,' he has given a beautiful and elo- 
quent picture of the peasant existence of his native country ; and 
under his character of " Christopher North" (his pseudonym as 
editor of ' Blackwood') he has performed the same office for the 
scenery of Scotland, as in the prose tales, just mentioned, he had 
done for the joys and woes, the virtues and sufferings, of its in- 
habitants. 

The second great subdivision of public opinion, or what may 
be called the Constitutional Liberal party, is represented by' The 
Edinburgh Review,' established in 1802 by a small party of 
young men, obscure at that time, but ambitious and enterprising, 
who were all destined to attain a high degree of distinction. 'The 
Edinburgh' founded its claim to success upon the boldness and 
vivacity of its tone, its total rejection of all precedent and au- 
thority, and the audacity with which it discussed questions pre- 
viously held to be "hedged in" with the "divinity" of prescrip- 
tion. The ' Edinburgh' was an absolute literary Fronde; and its 
founders — Brougham, Jeffrey, Sidney Smith, Hallam, &c. — were 
soon convinced that they had not erred in calculating upon an 
extraordinary degree of success. The criticisms (many of which 
were retrospective, that is, discussing the merits of past eras in 
the history and literature of England and other countries) were 
marked by a singular boldness and pungency; and in contempo- 
rary and local subjects the 'Review' exhibited a power and ex- 
tent of view which made its appearance, in some sense, an era in 
journalism. The critical articles are supposed to have been chiefly 
contributed by Jeffrey, many by Scott (though the total variance 
of his political sentiments with those advocated in the work may 
make us more surprised that he should have contributed at all 
than that he should have confined his labours to mere literary sub- 
jects), whilst Smith and Brougham, and more recendy Macaulay, 



416 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XX. 

have united history, politics, and literature. The latter has pro- 
duced many noble articles on these subjects (for example, those 
on Machiavelli, on Cromwell, &c.), and Smith treated political 
questions with a richness of comic humour, and irresistible dry 
sarcasm, employed generally in exhaustive reasoning — in the re- 
(hictio ad absurdum — which is not only exquisitely amusing, but 
is full of solid truth as well as pleasantry. 

With reference to the Liberal party, ' The New Monthly Maga- 
zine' occupied at one time a similar position to that which ' Black- 
wood' does in relation to the Tory opinions. This journal (the 
continuation of one of the earliest of English periodicals) is ex- 
ceedingly inferior in general literary talent to any of those which 
we have mentioned : it is pitched altogether in a lower key, both 
as regards politics and belles-lettres ; but at the same time it can- 
not be accused of gross partiality and misrepresentation ; a -charge 
from which none of the journals above described can be said to 
have been always free. Its strength consists in the novels which 
have from time to time appeared, in its pages, in the manner of 
the feuilleton, and in the gay pleasantry which is generally to be 
found in its articles. It has been conducted by a succession of dis- 
tinguished humorists and novel-writers — Theodore Hook, Thomas 
Campbell, Capt. Marryat, and Thomas Hood — and contains a 
large mass of excellent fiction. 

The two great parties of Tory and Whig, monarchical and 
popular, which we have been speaking of, are strictly constitu- 
tional. The remaining one, the youngest in point of origin, but 
which is rapidly gaining strength and consistency, by no means 
scruples to advocate what are called organic changes in our form 
of government. This party, the ultra-liberal, the democratic, the 
Radical, as it has been nicknamed — is possessed rather of intelli- 
gence, restlessness, and ambition, than, as yet at least, of influence 
and weight ; but it has its organ like its great rivals. This is ' The 
Westminster Review,' a journal sustained with very considerable 
power and en^ergy: but it is rather in certain departments of anti- 
quarian and artistic literature that ' The Westminster' has created 
itself a section of admirers : the educated classes in England 
sympathise too little with the doctrines advocated in this journal 
for it to obtain a very general circulation. The ' Quarterly,' ' Ed- 
inburgh,' and ' Westminster' (like the generality of reviews) ap- 
pear every three months : the magazines, in almost all cases, are 
monthly. 

Besides these, there are of course innumerable publications of 
a local or special kind, devoted to the furtherance of some par- 
ticular interest or of some science or art. Thus theology, law, 
history, medicine, physics and their separate branches, commerce, 
colonies, agriculture, manufactures, and even the most apparently 



CHAP. XXI.] WORDSWORTH. 417 

limited sciences, geology, palaeontology, numismatology, even rail- 
roads, mines, and the art of galvano-metallurgy, have each their 
separate journal or journals. Each art, each pursuit, each whim 
or amusement is represented by some periodical, generally of 
merit and possessing a considerable circulation. 

But we have, also, a large and increasing mass of information 
given to us in a variety of other periodical works, many of which 
are sold at a price inconceivably small, if we consider the ordinary 
costliness of books in England ; such, for example, as the publica- 
tions by Constable and Chambers in Scotland, and the prolific 
brood of 'Family Libraries,' 'Cabinet Cyclopaedias,' and penny 
journals. These works, by which a great extent of useful, if 
not very profound knowledge is placed at the disposal of the 
labouring classes, have in most cases been exceedingly successful, 
and are calculated to give a foreigner a high idea of the intellectual 
activity and enterprise of the English people ; — an impression 
which will become still stronger when he finds the contents of 
these collections to be, in almost every case, well selected, well 
arranged, decorous and moral, written always with respectable, 
and often with extraordinary ability. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, AND THE NEAV POETRY. 

Wordsworth, and the Lake School— Philosophical and Poetical Theories— ^The 
Lyrical Ballads — The Excursion — Sonnets — Coleridge — Poems and Criticisms 
— Conversational Eloquence — Charles Lamb — The Essays of Elia — Leigh 
Hunt — Keats — The living Poets — Conclusion. 

The throne of English poetry, left vacant by the early death 
of Byron, is now unquestionably filled by Wordsworth. It was 
a species of revolution which seated the author of ' Childe Harold' 
upon that throne : it is a counter-revolution which has deposed 
" the grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme." The ' English 
Bards' was Byron's I8th Fructidor ; the publication of ' The Ex- 
cursion' was his Waterloo. But in the fluctuation of popular 
taste, in the setting of that current, which, flowing from the old 
classicisms, has carried us insensibly, but irresistibly, first through 
Romanticism, and has now brought us to a species of metaphysical 
quietism, there have been many temporary changes of direction ; 
nay, some apparent stoppages. Despite the effort and impulsion 
of the Byronian poetry — the poetry of passion — there were 



418 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. j^CHAP. XXI. 

writers who not only retained many characteristics of the forms 
that had to appearance been exploded, but even something of the 
old tone of sentiment; modified, of course, by the aesthetic prin- 
ciples which were afterwards to be completely embodied in such 
a cycle of great works as constitutes a school of literature. Thus 
Crabbe, with his singular versification (a kind of mezzo-tennine 
between the smart antithetic manner of Pope and the somewhat 
languid melody of Goldsmith), combined a gloomy analysis of 
crime and weakness with pictures of common life delineated with 
a Flemish minuteness of detail ; and the traditions of the purely 
classic school survived in the diction of Rogers and the exquisite 
finish of Campbell. These poets are the connecting links be- 
tween the two systems so opposite and apparently so incompati- 
ble ; and it is not surprising that these writers, both of whom have 
deservedly become classics in our language, should exhibit, in the 
difference of feeling and treatment perceptible when we compare 
their first works with their last, a perfect image of the gradual 
transition of public taste from the one style of writing to the other. 
They both began, the former in ' The Pleasures of Memory,' and 
the latter in ' The Pleasures of Hope,' as imitators of Akenside 
(himself an imitator of Milton) and of Goldsmith ; while in their 
later works we trace a gradually increasing tendency towards the 
more passionate and lyric tone of modern poetry. In Rogers' 
exquisite poem of 'Human Life,' in his 'Italy,' in his charming 
songs and fugitive pieces, we find him gradually receding farther 
and farther from his first models: and in examining the works of 
Thomas Campbell we perceive a still stronger proof of the same 
transition. ' The Pleasures of Hope,' published at the very early 
age of twenty-four, was absolutely a reproduction of the tone and 
feeling of 'The Traveller;' but if we follow Campbell through 
his tender and pathetic narrative poem of ' Gertrude of Wyo- 
ming,' and his admirable lyrics — national and patriotic, and among 
the finest in any language — we shall see that in him, as in the 
general state of literary feeling reflected in his works, a complete 
and vast change had taken place. In literature nothing can ever 
be perfectly destroyed or obliterated, nothing can exist without 
producing an influence on remote times ; and poetry therefore 
will ever bear something of an eclectic character. 

It is the philosophy of Wordsworth — his theory, religious, 
social, and moi'al — that has most deeply coloured the poetry of 
the present day in England. He has exercised upon the litera- 
ture of his country an influence far more permanent and powerful 
than that which was communicated to the mind of Europe by 
the splendid innovations of Byron, although it was not so intense 
and rapid in its first development. The Lake School (so called 
because its founders resided chiefly among the picturesque scenery 



CHAP. XXI.] THE LAKE SCHOOL. 419 

of the lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland, and have de- 
scribed with enthusiastic fondness not only that beautiful mount- 
ain region, but also the simple virtues and pastoral innocence of 
its inhabitants) was founded by Wordsworth, Coleridge, and 
Southey; of whom the former must be considered as the most 
industrious aposde and expounder of its doctrines. These doc- 
trines are not of a mere aesthetic character: so far from it, indeed, 
that their aesthetic deductions are simply an application to art, of 
principles of faith and reasoning of the most elevated and all-em- 
bracing character. Their poetry is, in short, nothing but an 
embodiment, in a particular form, of a theory which, whether 
true or false, involves the highest concernments of man in his 
relation to God, to nature, to his fellow-creatures, and to himself. 
These writers are in some sense the Quietists, the Mystics, the 
Quakers of the poetic fraternity. As critics, the chief object of 
their attacks was the conventional language, so long considered 
as inseparable from poetry. They considered that the ordinary 
speech of the common people, being founded on the most general 
and universal feelings of the mind, and expressive of the most 
extensive class of wants and ideas, was a more faithful philoso- 
phical, and durable vehicle for thought than the ornamented and 
ambitious phraseology heretofore deemed essential to poetry, 
although subject, as it was to every caprice of fashion and taste. 
Nor were their ethical doctrines less bold. Strong passions, 
splendid and striking actions, revenge, ambition, unbridled love, 
all that had hitherto been considered as the very stuff and mate- 
rial of poetical impressions, they held to be wanting in the higher 
attribute of dignity and fitness for the artist's purposes. All in 
our nature, that either indicates, generates, or proceeds from a 
selfish motive, they held to be demonstrably less sublime than the 
tranquil virtues, the development of the affections, and the inces- 
sant effort of the soul to unite itself by meditation and reverent 
aspiration with God himself. Thus, casting down, at the feet of 
the Divinity, the passions of our nature, they of course were the 
iconoclasts also of the idols of human reason. For the acute 
speculator, the pryer into the material creation, the philosophaster, 
the quack and empyric of science, they express the most intense 
contempt; being too apt to confound the legitimate exercise of our 
intellect and curiosity with the petty, unfeeling, irreverent spirit 
of the 

" Philosopher, a fingering slave, 
One that would peep, and pry, and botanise 
Upon his mother's grave." 

In proportion as the world becomes more civilized, the splen- 
dida vilia will, so to say, sink in value in our moral exchange ; 
and the day may come when courage and military energy, for 



420 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XXI. 

example, will be considered as the necessary barbarism of a 
savage state, and the exploits of a Charles XII. and a Napoleon 
will be looked back upon with a half-pitying, half-incredulous 
wonder. That the human race is yet arrived at this point of phi- 
losophy and civilization does not very evidently appear ; but the 
doctrines of Wordsworth's school are an attempt to anticipate this 
millennium of innocence and virtue. In the same way as thcs, 
ordinary sentiments of poetry are rejected by the Lake School^ 
the ordinary subjects of it have no less been changed. The 
materials of many of their works, particularly of the earlier onesj 
are the adventures and sentiments of the very humblest class of 
human life, and such as, in themselves, would appear to defy anj 
power of rendering them interesting and attractive. Thus the 
heroes of ' Peter Bell' are a cruel carrier and his ass ; an idiot 
boy focras the whole subject of another poem; and an old pedler 
is the chief personage in the noble fragment of ' The Excursion.' 
The diction is of course characterised by similar singularities. 
Peculiarly awake to the defects of that brilliant and ingenious 
poetry which was introduced into England from France at the 
Restoration, and whose chief representatives are Prior, Waller, 
and Pope, the Lakists appear to have shut their eyes to its in- 
contestable merits; or, if they allow the existence of those merits, 
they consider them as of so low an order, and purchased so 
dearly, that they prefer the simple pathos, the rude picturesque- 
ness of the old English ballads to all the sparkle and ingenuity 
of the Poets of the Intellect. Wordsworth's earlier diction was 
marked by a humility and even meanness of phrase; and the 
ballads, published in 1798, excited a universal uproar of ridicule. 
Both the system, and the ridicule it gave birth to, were naturally 
somewhat exaggerated : it is not, therefore, surprising that those 
very journals, such as 'The Quarterly,' 'The Edinburgh,' and 
'Blackwood's Magazine,' which overwhelmed the 'Lyrical Bal- 
lads' on their first appearance with ridicule, should have gradu- 
ally become admirers, if not warm supporters, of Wordsworth's 
poetical and moral opinions. There can, however, be no ques- 
tion that, in liis first publications, he carried his system much too 
far ; and the Lake School, in their eagerness to escape the Idols 
of the Theatre, have sometimes manifestly fallen under the in- 
fluence of the Idols of the Den. One thing, however, is incon- 
testable ; the new school of poetry draws its inspiration from a 
truly elevated source. With these writers, poetry is but an em- 
bodiment and expression of faith. Their works are not the pro- 
ductions of mere intellectual dexterity; but are monuments of 
the profoundest conviction, of the sublimest aspirations after what 
is good, and beautiful, and true. Poetry, with them, is a religion; 
and they, like the bards of the heroic age, are not artists only, but 



i 



CHAP. XXI.] WORDSWORTH. 421 

priests and hierophants. In Wordsworth, poetry, which is but 
another name for the reverent study of nature, embraces all know- 
ledge, all sanctity, all truth. With him it is 

" The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, 
The guide, the guardian of my heart j and soul 
Of all my moral being." 

The prominent feature in Wordsworth's system of mingled 
aesthetics and ethics, is the belief that external nature is not the 
mere lifeless echo of the voice of God, but the voice itself: and 
that the stream, the cloud, the leaf, are not altogether inanimate 
and feelingless ; but that they have a consciousness and a language 
of their own, audible and intelligible to all who will reverently 
listen; but most audible, most intelligible to the poet; whose 
only difference from other men consists in his greater fineness of 
ear for that universal hymn of nature. This leading idea will be 
found, also, in the more lofty meditations of the Platonic dia- 
logues. These ideas Plato obtained, we know, from his master 
Socrates ; and they came originally, in all probability, from the 
East ; for Oriental poetry bears much of this peculiar stamp of 
mysticism. A. great deal of this platonism is to be found embodied 
in the poetry of the Elizabethan era; not only in the great work 
of Spenser, where it is indeed peculiarly perceptible ; but even in 
the productions of men whose reputation, then very great, has 
not been able to resist the destroying power of time — in the 
poems, for instance, of Sir John Davies, of Phineas Fletcher, 
and of Sylvester. In the Indian poetry this diffusion, through 
all nature, of consciousness and of feeling, tends directly to a 
species of sublime pantheism : in Wordsworth, the same dog- 
mas, made subservient to the doctrines of the Christian revela- 
tion, acquire a still more pure and ethereal character. If we 
examine the whole collection of Wordsworth's poems, we shall 
find that, while he has remained faithful to the ethical part of his 
theory, he has involuntarily been obliged to renounce a great 
deal of what was peculiar in his art ; that is, its peculiar language. 
That extreme simplicity of diction and imagery, which he formerly 
seemed to consider the only true vehicle of poetical impressions, 
was obviously too little in accordance with his elevated and 
abstract doctrines to be retained, for any length of time, as his 
poetical language. Thus, while an unlearned peasant would have 
found nothing in Wordsworth's early narratives and songs which 
he would not have perfectly understood, as far as the words were 
concerned, the deductions, the drift, the moral results would have 
remained, and ever will remain, as unintelligible to such a reader 
as if they were couched in the most artificial and ornamented 
rhetoric. Many of Wordsworth's finest productions — as, for 
example, the admirable 'Laodamia,' his Sonnets, and nearly all 
36 



432 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [^CHAP. XXI. 

' The Excursion' — are, as far as the diction and versification are 
concerned, written in strong discordance with the poet's own 
theory of poetical expression : and are so far from exemplifying 
an extreme simplicity, and the use of the most popular or even 
rustic phraseology, that they are absolutely among the most highly 
finished and elaborate specimens of artificial diction which the 
English language can show. Milton, Spenser, Akenside, Thom- 
son, are undoubtedly among the most scholastic of our poets ; and 
yet we do not think it too much to say that the language of these 
learned writers is more intelligible to the great body of readers 
than the contemplative style of ' The Excursion :" and hence 
it is that the poets we have just mentioned are really more 
popular — that is, read by a greater number of persons, particu- 
larly of the humbler classes — than Wordsworth is now, or is 
ever likely to be. The really great benefit which he has con- 
ferred upon his art, is that of showing future writers the necessity 
of thinking, and seeing, and describing for themselves ; and not 
accepting at second-hand, from any model, however admirable, 
any set of words or images to which a conventional idea of beauty 
is attached, and hoping that thereby any strong impressions can 
be excited. 

Many of the smaller detached poems to be found in the ' Lyri- 
cal Ballads' are absolutely unequalled. What renders them so 
remarkable is the pure and lofty tone of philosophical morality, 
which gives a weight and dignity to apparently the most trivial 
subjects. Nothing seems inserted in them for the sake of the 
mere words ; and the result is that the diction has that exquisite di- 
rectness, simplicity, and grace which form the indefinable charm 
of the Greek epigrams. The Odes have, perhaps, something in 
them rather too mystical; and may be censured for a certain want 
of clearness and intelligibleness : but there is not one of them 
which does not contain some passage, some phrase, such as no 
poet but Wordsworth could have produced. The smaller poems 
in the ballad measure are those which are perhaps most univer- 
sally known. Who has not read 'The Fountain,' 'Matthew,' 
' We are Seven V 

But Wordsworth's great work is indubitably ' The Excursion.' 
This is a fragment of a projected great moral epic, discussing 
and solving the mightiest questions concerning God, nature, and 
man, our moral constitution, our duties, and our hopes. Its dra- 
matic interest is exceedingly small ; its structure is very inartificial ; 
and the characters represented in it are devoid of life and proba- 
bility. That an old Scottish pedler, a country clergyman, and a 
disappointed visionary should reason so continuously and so sub- 
limely on the destinies of man, is in itself a gross want of veri- 



CHAP. XXI.] WORDSWORTH. 423 

similitutle ; and the purely speculative nature of their interminable 
arguments 

"On knowledge, will, and fate," 

are not relieved from their monotony even by the abundant and 
beautiful descriptions and the pathetic episodes so thickly inter- 
spersed. It is Wordsworth, too, who is speaking always and. 
alone ; there is no variety of language, none of the shock and. 
vivacity of intellectual wresding; but, on the other hand, so 
sublime are the subjects on which they reason, so lofty and 
seraphic is their tone, and so deep a glow of humanity is per- 
ceptible throughout, that no reader, but such as seek in poetry 
for mere food for the curiosity and imagination, can study this 
grand composition without ever-increasing reverence and delight. 
Christianity is here exhibited under its most divine aspect; and 
the oracles of truth are pronounced in words of more than mor- 
tal sweetness. 

In 1815 appeared ' The White Doe of Rylstone,' the only nar- 
rative poem of any length which Wordsworth has ever written. 
The incidents are of a simple and exceedingly mournful kind, turn- 
ing chiefly on the complete ruin of a north-country family in the 
civil wars : but the atmosphere of mystical and supernatural in- 
fluences in which the personages move, the superhuman purity 
and unearthliness of the characters, and above all the part played in 
the action by the white doe, which gives name to the work, — all 
these things contribute to communicate to the production a fan- 
tastic, unreal, and somewhat aff'ected air. In a narrative, clear- 
ness, directness, simplicity, are, above all things, necessary ; and 
no beauty of imagery and versification, no purity of ideas will 
suffice to please us where these are wanting. In some of his 
shorter narratives, ' Hartleap Well,' the beautiful tale of ' The 
Boy of Egremont,' and above all the unsurpassable ' Laodamia,' 
Wordsworth has amply shown his power of uniting, to his un- 
equalled grandeur of meditation, all the charms of a rapid and 
natural narrative. Perhaps the last of these is the finest tale of 
the kind in any language : and in many other litde works — as 
' Michael,' ' Ruth,' and ' The Female Vagrant' — the difl^useness 
of the manner is more than compensated by the beauty and verity 
of the matter. 

A very large proportion of this author's more recent works (he 
has been all his life a most industrious author, and has now reached 
his seventy-sixth year) consists of sonnets. Of this difficult, and, 
at first sight, ungrateful species of composition, apparently so 
little suited to the peculiar genius of our language, we have in 
English literature many admirable examples. Its merits are thus 
insisted upon by Wordsworth himself in the following beautiful 
lines: — 



424 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XXI. 

" Scorn not the Sonnet : Critic ! you have frown'd, 

Mindless of its just honours : with this key 

Shakspeare unlock'd his heart; the melody 
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound ; 
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound; 

Camoens sooth'd with it an exile's grief: 

The Sonnet glitter'd a gay myrtle-leaf 
Amid the cypress with which Dante bound 
His visionary brow : a glowworm lamp, 

It cheer'd mild Spenser, call'd from Faery-land 
To struggle through dark ways ; and when a damp 

Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand 
The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew 

Soul-animating strains — alas! too few." 

The sonnets of Wordsworth are in no sense inferior to the finest 
examples, we will not say of Shakspeare, Sidney, and Milton 
only, but of Petrarch or of Filicaja, He has perfecdy appreciated 
the true aim and rule of this kind of writing. Whether the pre- 
vailing emotion be patriotic enthusiasm, religious fervour, or the 
tenderer influences of beautiful scenery, historic spots of national 
interest, or the impressions of art, he never fails to give that unity 
of feeling, that gradual swell of gentle harmony — rising, like a 
summer wave, till it softly breaks into melody in the last line — 
■which is the peculiar charm and merit of this most difficult kind 
of composition. Many of his sonnets are connected together by 
a predominant tone or keynote ; and thus form complete w^orks 
— a treasury of every charm of thought and grace of execution. 
The literary character of Samuel Taylor Coleridge resembles 
some vast but unfinished palace : all is gigantic, beautiful, and 
rich; but nothing is complete, nothing compact. He was, all his 
days, from his youth to his death in 1834, labouring, meditating, 
projecting : and yet all that he has left us bears a painful cha- 
racter of fragmentariness and imperfection. His mind was emi- 
nently dreamy; he was deeply tinged with that incapacity of 
acting which, forms the characteristic of the German intellect ; 
his genius was multiform, many-sided ; and for this reason, per- 
haps, could not at once seize upon the right point of view. No 
man, probably, ever existed who thought more, and more intensely, 
than Coleridge ; few ever possessed a vaster treasury of learning 
and knowledge ; and yet how little has he given us ! or rather 
how few of his works are in any way worthy of the undoubted 
majesty of his genius ! Materials, indeed, he has left us in enor- 
mous quantity — a store of thoughts and principles, particularly in 
the department of aesthetic science — golden masses of reason, 
either painfully sifted from the rubbish of obscure and forgotten 
authors, or dug up from the rich depths of his own mind ; but 
these are still in the state of raw materials, or only partially 
worked. Of complete and substantive productions, all that we 
have of Coleridge are the following. — A small number of odes 



CHAP, XXI.] COLERIDGE. 425 

and lyrics, doubtless of extraordinary splendour and brilliancy, 
but still too much marked by a perceptible straininjr after gran- 
deur and energy, as if the poot were lashing up his indolent en- 
thusiasm by convulsive efforts; an admirable translation, or rather 
paraphrase, of the 'Piccolomini' and 'Death of Wallenstein,' exe- 
cuted under Schiller's own eye; a volume of miscellaneous prose 
essays, entided 'The Friend;' the tragedy of 'Remorse' and ' Za- 
polya ;' the ' Lectures on Shakspeare ;' and two or three lyrical 
poems, of which we shall give a somewhat more detailed criticism. 
During the greater part of his life, loo, he was exceedingly poor ; 
and his perpetual struggles to obtain bread by his pen obliged him, 
in many instances, to engage in tasks for which his peculiar men- 
tal constitution was completely unfit; — as, for example, the occu- 
pation of a political journalist. He began life as a Unitarian 
and republican ; his intellectual powers were chiefly formed in 
the transcendental schools of Germany; but he ultimately became 
from conviction a most sincere adherent to the doctrines of the 
Anglican church, and an enthusiastic defender of our monarchical 
constitution. Though the lyrics to which we have alluded (the 
finest of which are the odes ' On the Departing Year,' and that 
supposed to be written "at sunrise in the Valley of Chamouni"), 
are somewhat injured by their air of effort, they are indubitably 
works of singular richness, and exquisitely melodised language. 
The translations of the two members of Schiller's Trilogy of 
' Wallenstein' are so admirable that they are worthy of being com- 
pared with original poems of no mean order. Nothing can be 
more free from stiffness, coldness, or any sign of the ideas being 
those of another poet. It is true that Coleridge's mind was in 
no degree dramatic; and therefore the variations (which are ex- 
ceedingly numerous, and often exquisitely happy) which he has 
made from the text of the German, are generally rather beautiful 
developments of some train of reflection, only hinted at in the 
original, than any new strokes of character or increased vivacity 
of action. Coleridge's variations from his original are all of 
augmentation, or of evolution, never of condensation; for he was 
great rather as an observer, a describer, and a meditator, than as 
an embodier. No reader can fail to remark, as an example of 
this, the beautiful verses in which he describes the ancient popular 
mythologies and superstitions. This lovely passage is the expan- 
sion of a mere hint of Schiller's, conveyed in a couple of lines. 

That Coleridge had no power of true dramatic creation is 
s'trongly proved by his tragedy of ' The Remorse;' in which, in 
spite of very striking features of character (as in Ordonio), and a 
multitude of incidents of the most violent kind, he has not pro- 
duced a drama which either excites curiosity or moves any strong 
degree of pity. What is most beautiful in the work is all pure 

36* 



426 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XXI. 

description, and in no sense advances the action or exhibits hu- 
man passions. It is strange, perhaps, but yet by no means unin- 
telligible, that a man who was so unsuccessful in creating emo- 
tions of a theatrical kind should have been a most consummate 
critic of the dramatic productions of others, Till he wrote, deep 
and universal as had been the admiring love — almost the adoration 
— of the English for Shakspeare, there still remained, in their 
judgments, something of that de haut en bas tone which charac- 
terises all the criticisms anterior to Coleridge's ' Lectures on 
Shakspeare.' Coleridge first showed that the creator of 'Ham- 
let' and ' Othello' was not only the greatest genius, but also the 
most consummate artist, who ever existed. Nothing can give us 
a higher opinion of the nobility of Coleridge's mind than that he 
Avas the first to make some approach to the discovery of those 
laws which, expressly or intuitively, governed the evolutions of 
the Shakspearian drama — that he possessed a soul vast enough, 
deep enough, multiform enough, to give us some faint idea of the 
dimensions, the length, and breadth, and depth, of that huge sea 
of truth and beauty. 

Of the poems by which Coleridge is best known, both in Eng- 
land and abroad, the most universally read is undoubtedly 'The 
Rime of the Auncient Marinere,' a wild, mystical, phantasmagoric 
narrative, most picturesquely related in the old English ballad 
measure, and in language to which is skilfully given an air of an- 
tiquity in admirable harmony with the spectral character of the 
events. The whole poem is a splendid dream, filling the ear with 
the strange and floating melodies of sleep, and the eye with a 
shifting vaporous succession of fantastic images, gloomy or ra- 
diant. The wedding party stopped on their way to the feast by 
the " bright-eyed marinere," the awful fascination by which the 
guest is obliged to hear and the wanderer to tell his tale, the skele- 
ton ships, and the phantoms which play at dice for the soul of the 
mariner, the punishment and repentance of the man who "shot 
the albatross," — all this is wound up into one splendid tissue of 
cloudy phantoms. We read on, with that kind of consciousness 
of half-reality, that sensation of indistinct surprise, with which 
we are carried onward in our dreams. Extravagant and unreal 
as it all is, that important quality of harmony of tone is scrupu- 
lously kept up ; and hence the pleasure we experience : we are 
placed in a new unearthly atmosphere, and all glimpses of the real 
world are carefully avoided. 

The poem of ' Christabel,' and the fragment called ' Kubla 
Khan,' are of the same mystic, unreal character : indeed, Cole- 
ridge asserted that the latter was actually composed in a dream — 
an aflirmation which may well be believed, for it is a thousand 
times more unintelligible than the general run of dreams. It is a 



CHAP. XXI.] COLERIDGE. 427 

dream, perhaps ; but it is an opium-dream — " acgri somnium" — 
without so much as that faint coherency which even a dream 
must have to give pleasure in a picture or in a poem. liike ' The 
Mariner,' like the odes, like everything that Coleridge ever wrote, 
it is exquisitely versified. In the hands of a great sculptor marble 
and bronze seem to become as soft and as elastic as living flesh ; 
and Coleridge seems to possess a similar dominion over his lan- 
guage. It puts on every form, it expresses every sound ; he al- 
most writes to the eye and to the ear : our rough, pithy English, 
in his verse, breathes all sounds, all melodies : 

" And now 'tis like all instruments, 
Now like a lonely flute ; 
And now it is an angel's song, 

That makes the heavens be mute." 

But in ' Christabel,' which has some slight pretensions to be an 
intelligible narrative, or at least, part of an intelligible narrative — 
for we have a maiden who meets in a forest with a fiend disguised 
as an earthly damsel, and who apparently defeats the evil spirit's 
machinations — the mixture of two realities (both dream-realities, 
but one as it were within the other, like a tragedy within a tra- 
gedy, as in ' Hamlet,' or as the picture of a picture in a picture) 
is not harmoniously subordinated ; and the effect is, of course, 
fatal to the poem as a work of art. 

In point of completeness, exquisite harmony of feeling, and 
unsurpassable grace of imagery and language, Coleridge has left 
nothing superior to the charming little poem entitled 'Love, or 
Genevieve.' Perhaps the English language contains nothing more 
perfect ; the very gentleness, ardour, and timidity of youthful pas- 
sion — the "purple light of love" — are breathed throughout. 

Coleridge's chief reputation, during his life, was founded less 
upon his writings than upon his conversation ; or, rather, what 
may be called his conversational oratory. Possessing in a de- 
gree very unusual in modern society, and particularly rare in 
England (where this kind of display is little in accordance with 
the laconism, the reserve, the positivisme, and the extreme bash- 
fulness of the national character), a most inexhaustible flow of elo- 
quent imagery, and a ready command of the harmony of speech, 
Coleridge's conversation — if it could be called conversation, where 
he had all the talk to himself — must have resembled those dis- 
quisitions of the Greek philosophers of which the dialogues of 
Plato are merely a literary embodiment. Starting from a casual 
observation on any subject, Coleridge would wander on through 
the whole infinitude of knowledge with a profuseness of illustra- 
tion, a profoundness of theory, and a rich and soothing melody of 
language, which those who knew him describe as having produced 
a kind of fascination in his hearers ; and would scatter, as he 



428 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XXI. 

went, such stores of reading, such new and subhme ideas on art, 
literature, and history, that, although his hearers often found them- 
selves, at the end of the disquisition, enormously far from the 
point of departure, their journey had been so delightful, had given 
them such glimpses into the sunny realms of tlie ideal and the 
pure heaven of truth, and had enriched them with such treasures 
of thought and sentiment, that they felt neither weariness nor sur- 
prise. They were carried, like the knight of Ariosto on his hip- 
pogrifF, upon the sublime wings of Coleridge's imagination ; and 
gave free way to the magic of the hour. Of this wonderful dis- 
courser might be said what Homer tells us of Nestor, that " From 
his tongue his speech streamed on, like silent flakes of ever-falling 
snow." 

It is in his innumerable fragments, in his rich but desultory re- 
mains (published posthumously under the title of ' Table-Talk') 
— in casual remarks scribbled like Sibylline leaves, often on the 
margins of borrowed books, and in imperfectly reported conver- 
sations, that we must look for proofs of Coleridge's immense but 
incompletely recorded powers ; it is from these alone that we can 
gather the disjecta membra poetse; and reconstruct, however im- 
perfectly, the image of this great thinker and imaginer. From a 
careful study of these we shall conceive a high admiration of his 
genius ; and a deep regret at the fragmentary and desultory mani- 
festation of his powers. We shall, also, appreciate the vastness 
and multiform character of a mind to which nothing was too diffi- 
cult or too obscure ; a noble tone of moral dignity " softened into 
beauty" by the largest sympathy; and, above all, an admirable 
catholicity of taste, which could unerringly pitch upon what was 
beautiful and true, and find its pabulum in all schools, all writers ; 
perceiving, as it were intuitively, the value and the charm of the 
most unpromising books and systems. 

Charles Lamb is one of the most admirable of those humorists 
who form the peculiar feature of the literature, as the ideas they 
express are the peculiar distinction of the character, of the Eng- 
lish people. He was born in 1775, and died in 1835 ; and forms 
a bright light in that intellectual galaxy of which Wordsworth is 
the centre. He was essentially a Londoner: London life supplied 
him with his richest materials ; and yet his mind was so imbued, 
so saturated with our older writers, that he is original by the mere 
force of self-transformation into the spirit of the elder literature : 
he was, in short, an old writer, who lived by accident a century 
or two after his real time. Wordsworth is peculiarly the poet of 
solitary rural nature ; Lamb drew an inspiration as true, as deli- 
cate, as profound, from the city life in which he lived ; and from 
which he never was for a moment removed but with pain and a 
yearning to come back. In him the organ of locality must have 



CHAP. XXI.] LAMB. 429 

been enormously developed: " his household gods planted a terri- 
bly fixed foot; and were not to be rooted up without blood." 
During the early and greater part of his life, Lamb, poor and un- 
friended, was drudging as a clerk in the India House ; and it was 
not till late in life that he was unchained from the desk. Yet in 
this, the most .monotonous and unideal of all employments, he 
found means to fill his mind with the finest aroma of our older 
authors : particularly of the prose writers and dramatists of the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: and in his earliest composi- 
tions, such as the play of ' John Woodvil,' and the ' Essays of 
Elia,' although the world at first received a mere imitation of their 
quaintness of expression, there was, in reality, a revival of their 
very spirit. The essays, contributed by him at diflferent times to 
one of the magazines, are the finest things, for humour, taste, pene- 
tration and vivacity, which had appeared since the days of Mon- 
taigne. Where shall we find such intense delicacy of feeling, such 
unimaginable happinesses of expression, such a searching into the 
very body of truth, as in these unpretending compositions? A 
chance word, dropped half by accident, a parenthesis, an exclama- 
tion, often lets us into tlie verj'^ mechanism of the sentiment — ad- 
mits us, as it were, behind the scenes. The style has a peculiar 
and most subtle charm ; not the result of labour, for it is found in 
as great perfection in his familiar letters — a certain quaintness 
and antiquity, not affected in Lamb, but the natural garb of his 
thoughts. This arises partly from the saturation of his mind with 
the rich and solid reading in which he delighted ; and partly, but 
in a much higher degree, from the sensibility of his mind. The 
manure was abundant, but the soil was also of a "Sicilian fruit- 
fulness." As in all the true humorists, his pleasantry was in- 
separably allied with the finest pathos : the merry quip on the 
tongue was but the commentary on the tear which trembled in 
the eye. He possessed the power, which is seen in Shakspeare's 
Fools, of conveying a deep philosophical verity in a jest — of unit- 
ing the wildest merriment with the truest pathos and the deepest 
wisdom. It is not only the easy laugh of Touchstone in the forest 
of Arden, but the heart-rending pleasantry of Lear's Fool in the 
storm. The inspiration that other poets find in the mountains, 
in the forest, in the sea. Lamb could draw from the crowd of 
Fleet-street, from the remembrances of an old actor, from the 
benchers of the Temple. In his poems, also, so few in number 
and so admirable in originality, we have the quintessence of fa- 
miliar sentiment, expressed in the diction of Herbert, Wither, 
and the great dramatists. 

Lamb was the schoolfellow, the devoted admirer and friend of 
Coleridge ; and perhaps there never was an individual so loved 
by all his contemporaries, by men of every opinion, of every 



430 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. CcHAP. XXI. 

shade of literary, political, and religious sentiment, as this truly- 
great wit and amiable man. The passionate enemy of every- 
thing like cant, commonplace, or conventionality, his writings 
derive a singular charm, a kind of fresh and wild flavour, from 
his delight in paradox. The man himself was full of para- 
dox : and his punning repartees, delivered with all the pangs of 
stuttering, often contained a decisive and unanswerable settle- 
ment of the question. In his drama of ' John Woodvil' he en- 
deavoured, though of course unsuccessfully, to revive the forms 
of the Elizabethan drama ; and the work might be mistaken for 
some woodland play of Heywood or Shirley. But it was his 
'Specimens of the Old English Dramatists' which showed what 
treasures of the richest poetry lay concealed in the unpublished, 
and in modern times unknown, writers of that wonderful age, 
whose fame had been eclipsed by the glory of some two or three 
names of the same period. In the few lines, often only the few 
words, of criticism in which Lamb sketched the characters of the 
dramatists (with whose writings, from the greatest to the least, 
from Shakspeare down to Broome or Tourneur, no man was ever 
more familiar), we see perpetual examples of the delicacy and 
penetration of his critical faculty. 

Lamb's mind, in its sensitiveness, in its mixture of wit and 
pathos, was eminently Shakspearian ; and his intense and reverent 
study of the works of Shakspeare doubtless gave a tendency to 
this : the glow of his humour was too pure and steady not to 
have been reflected from the sun. In his poems, as for instance 
the 'Farewell to Tobacco,' the ' Old Familiar Faces,' and his few 
but beautiful sonnets, we find the very essence and spirit of this 
quaint tenderness of fancy, the naivete of the child mingled with 
the learning of the scholar: they are like "that piece of song" 
in ' As You Like It' — " old and plain," 

"And dally with the innocence of love 
Like the old age." 

Among the ' Essays of Elia' are several little narratives, gene- 
rally visions and parables, inexpressibly simple and beautiful. 
That named ' Dream-Children,' and that other ' The Child-Angel,' 
are worthy of Jean Paul himself: while the little tale ' Rosamond 
Gray' is perhaps one of the most inimitable gems ever produced 
in that difficult style. 

Leigh Hunt and John Keats are two of the most distinguished 
names among the modern minor poets. The former, however, 
wrote rather under the inspiration of Lord Byron, and the latter 
under that of Shelley. Hunt endeavored to revive something of the 
freshness, fluency, and vivacity of the old English and old Italian 
poets; while Keats carried to excess the peculiar manner of his 
model. Both wrote "upon a system," as Byron remarked upon 



CHAP. XXl.J HUNT — KEATS. 431 

the former ; and, therefore, both of them will descend to posterity 
with an imperfect and unsatisfactory reputation. Hunt's best pro- 
duction, of any length, is the poem entitled ' A Story of Rimini ;' 
an expansion, into a pretty narrative, of the tale of ' Francesca 
da Rimini' condensed by Dante, with such intensity of pathos, 
into a few lines of his ' Inferno.' This work, which is written 
in the rhymed couplet founded upon Dryden's admirable modern- 
izations of Chaucer and the old Italian novelists, is full of a deli- 
cate and refined fancy ; but the diction is often deformed by a 
peculiar and intolerable coxcombry of language, to which has 
been given the significant appellation of cockneyism. It is a 
mixture of the concetti of second-rate Italian poetry with the 
smug arcadianism of a London citizen masquerading as a shep- 
herd. Hunt, like his friend and contemporary Hazlitt, has done 
good service to his country as a miscellaneous critic and essayist 
on various detached portions of our literature, particularly that of 
th<^ sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; and in the ' Indicator' of 
the former there is much agreeable chat on literature and art; 
seldom very profound perhaps, but always sparkling with a singu- 
lar effervescence of animal spirits, and filled (the greatest charm 
in writing of this nature) with a sincere and lively admiration for 
the beauties under examination. The more ambitious tone of 
Hazlitt's writings, and the more scientific exposition and investi- 
gation of aesthetic principles, may seem to claim for him a place 
rather nearer to that occupied by Coleridge ; but we are not sure 
that Hunt's easy, pleasant, good-humoured chat has not done 
more than Hazlitt's graver tone to disseminate a taste for rich 
and healthy literature. 

Keats, whose short life was embittered by the contemptuous re- 
ception his first poems met with from the critics, was born in 1796, 
and died at the age of 24. What is most remarkable in his works 
is the wonderful profusion of figurative language, often exquisitely 
beautiful and luxuriant, but sometimes purely fantastical and far- 
fetched. The peculiarity of Shelley's style, to which we gave the 
name of incatenation, Keats carries to extravagance — one word, 
one image, one rhyme suggests another, till we quite lose sight of 
the original idea; which is smothered in its own sweet luxuriance, 
like a bee stifled in honey. Shakspeare and his school, upon 
whose manner Keats undoubtedly endeavoured to form his way 
of writing, have, it is true, this peculiarity of language ; but in 
them the images never run away with the thought ; the guiding 
master-idea is ever present. These poets never throw the reins 
on the mane of their Pegasus, even when soaring to " the brightest 
heaven of invention." With them, the images are produced by a 
force acting ab intra ; like w'ild flowers springing from the very 
richness of the ground. In Keats the force acts ah extra; the 



432 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XXI. 

flowers are forcibly fixed in the earth, as in the garden of a child, 
who cannot wait till they grow there of themselves. Keats de- 
serves high praise for one very peculiar and original merit : he has 
treated the classical mythology in a way absolutely new ; repre- 
senting the pagan deities not as mere abstractions of art, nor as 
mere creatures of popular belief; but giving them passions and 
affections like our own, highly purified and idealised, however, and 
in exquisite accordance with the lovely scenery of ancient Greece 
and Italy, and with the golden atmosphere of primeval existence. 
This treatment of a subject, which ordinary readers would con- 
sider hopelessly outworn and threadbare, is certainly not Homeric ; 
nor is it Miltonic ; nor is it in the manner of any of the great poets 
who have employed the mythologic imagery of antiquity : but it 
is productive of very exquisite pleasure; and must, therefore, be 
in accordance with true principles of art. In ' Hyperion,' in the 
' Ode to Pan,' in the 'Verses on a Grecian Urn,' we find a noble 
and airy strain of beautiful classic imagery, combined with a jier- 
ception of natural loveliness so luxuriant, so rich, so delicate, that 
the rosy dawn of Greek poetry seems combined with all that is 
most tenderly pensive in the calm sunset twilight of romance. 
Such of Keats's poems as are founded on more modern subjects 
— ' The Eve of St. Agnes,' for example, or ' The Pot of Basil,' a 
beautiful anecdote versified from Boccaccio — are to our taste infe- 
rior to those of his productions in which the scenery and person- 
ages are mythologic. It would seem as if the severity of ancient 
art, which in the last-mentioned works acted as an involuntary 
check upon a too luxuriant fancy, deserted him when he left the 
antique world ; and the absence of true, deep, intense passion (his 
prevailing defect) becomes necessarily more painfully apparent; as 
well as the discordant mingling of the prettinesses of modern po- 
etry with the directness and unaffected simplicity of Chaucer and 
Boccaccio. 

Depth and intensity of feeling, which we have denied to Keats, 
form the great secret of the power of Thomas Hood; an author 
long known chiefly as an admirable punster, and a writer of the 
most broadly comic character; but whose reputation, as an admira- 
ble poet and profound humorist, is growing day by day. For 
several years he published a volume called ' The Comic Annual,' 
a species of burlesque upon the gift-books then so popular in 
England ; and the droll prose and verse, illustrated by still droller 
woodcuts executed by himself, supplied Christmas parties with 
a never-failing annuity of laughter. He also produced, princi- 
pally as contributions to ' The New Monthly Magazine,' of 
which he was for some time editor, a large number of tales, 
generally turning upon some minute but grotesque incident, and 
treated in a manner so perfectly original, that Hood must abso- 



CHAP. XXI 



,] HOOD. 433 



lutely be considered as constituting an era in tlie history of 
comic literature. Like Lamb, he was a consummate punster; 
and, like Lamb's, his puns and wildest friskings of humour not 
only excite a momentary laugh, but frequently contain an inner 
and esoteric sense, often wonderfully beautiful and profound. 
Like Lamb, too, Hood possessed a sort of intuitive perception of 
truth and beauty ; and, like him, his heart was warm and his 
sympathy boundless. In the little prose tales, where he talks to 
his reader in a strain at once wonderfully imaginative, profound, 
and ludicrous — in his admirable imaginary correspondences, 
generally between servants, or peasants, who distort the English 
language so as to produce truly Rabelfesian double and triple 
meanings — in his comic poems, as the story of Miss Kielmans- 
egg — in his graver letters on the rights of the literary profession, 
and on the condition of the poor, he shows an inexhaustible rich- 
ness of invention, a power over words and combinations, which 
never fails not only to gratify our curiosity and sense of the 
ludicrous, but even to supply us with ideas new, tender, and 
sometimes sublime. But Hood is also a great original poet of a 
serious and romantic cast. His ' Dream of Eugene Aram,' his 
' Elm Tree,' are works of powerful conception, and permanent 
interest; his ' Plea of the Midsummer Fairies,' his ' Two Swans,' 
and ' Lycus the Centaur,' are exquisite pieces of airy and fantastic 
imagery, nothing inferior to Keats's happiest productions ; while 
he must be considered as the originator of a very peculiar and 
powerful species of songs, equally admirable for the force and 
simplicity of their diction, the harmony and novelty of their 
metrical construction, and above all for the fervid and vigorous 
spirit of humanity which they breathe. The beautiful stanzas 
called 'The Bridge of Sighs,' and the painfully touching 'Song 
of the Shirt,' were the means of exciting for an unhappy and 
neglected class of his countrywomen the pity, the interest, and 
even the active benevolence of the nation. Such things are not 
only good works, but good actions ; and the triumph of having 
made genius a minister to philanthropy is a glory worthy of the 
friend of Lamb and the first humorous writer of his age. 

It now remains to pass rapidly over a few names of contempor- 
ary writers ; less remarkable, in general, for originality of genius 
than for elegance of taste, happy selection of subject, or novelty 
of treatment. In the department of poetry women have shown 
as great an activity as in most other fields of modern literature. 
The rich and fervid lone of Mrs. Hemans would deserve a more 
detailed mention than our space will afl^ord ; and Mrs. Norton, 
L. E. L., and other ladies have shown no mean mastery over the 
tenderer moods of the modern lyre. Of the distinguished but less 
important men — our Dii minorum gentium — it will suffice to 
37 



434 OUTLINES OF GENERAL LITERATURE. [cHAP. XXI. 

specify Mr. Barham, who has written, under the pseudonym of 
Thomas Ingoldsby, a series of comic tales in easy verse; — wild 
and wondrous legends of chivalry, witchcraft, and diablerie, related 
in singularly rich and flexible metre ; and in language in which 
the intermixture of the modern cant phrase of society with anti- 
quarian pedantry produces a truly comic efl^ect. Tennyson, 
Alford, and Milnes may be considered as the poetical disciples 
of Wordsworth. Thomas Babington Macaulay, celebrated as a 
brilliant critic a,nd essayist in 'The Edinburgh Review,' having 
been struck with Niebuhr's theory, that the early history of Rome 
was compiled by Livy and other historians from popular metrical 
legends since lost, conceived the bold and happy idea of recon- 
structing some of these vanished ballads in rough picturesque 
plebeian metre; and producing in English some such fierce re- 
publican lays as miglit have been sung by the peasant heroes of 
ancient Rome. He has executed in this manner the stories of 
'Horatius Codes,' 'The Battle of Lake Regillus,' 'The Death 
of Virginia,' with a fire and animation which eclipsed even his 
own powerful ballads on events in the History of France ; and 
has shown himself to be not merely a master of all the strength 
and muscular power of our early language, but also intimately 
penetrated by the spirit of antiquity and the rugged independence 
of old Rome. 

In thus investigating, however cursorily, the course of English 
literature from its remote origin in Chaucer — himself an emblem 
of the confluence, so to say, of three diff'erent streams of art 
and nationality — the original Saxonism, the Italian spirit of 
the Renaissance, and the free spirit of the Reformation — no 
one can fail to be struck with one singular and noble pecu- 
liarity ; — a peculiarity which it has in common with the na- 
tionality it reflects ; and one which, though perceptible in the 
character of every branch of the Teutonic race, was never 
possessed so completely as by the English nation. We mean 
that intense and ever-present sap and vitality, which allowed no 
interval to interfere between the most gigantic and dissimilar ex- 
ei-tions of creative energy. No sooner does any class of compo- 
sition, any school of literature, decline from its period of highest 
fertility, than another springs up, as rich, as living, and as ener- 
getic as the former. The English intellect, thanks to the happy 
freedom of our institutions, and the strong virility of the national 
character, has no dull, dead, periods of feeble imitation and lan- 
guid servility. The moment it has duly developed itself in one 
direction, it instantly takes and steadily maintains another : and 
our literature — essentially the literature of a nation of men — rich 
in the finest and most unequalled models of every kind and class 
of excellence — is in every sense worthy of the greatest, freest. 



CHAP. XXI. 3 CONCLUSION. 435 

and most thoughtful people that the world has ever seen. So 
glorious a past can promise nothing but a future as illustrious. 
The same powers and influences which have enabled England to 
produce more and greater things than any other community can 
boast, are still at work ; and will enable her to produce others, 
difl'erent in kind perhaps, but as durable, as splendid, as sublime. 



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THE WORKS OF DE CANDOLLE, LINDLEY, ice 
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11 .-CHRISTIAN SECTS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
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tfODS. 

MACKINTOSH'S DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS 
OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY, 

WITH A PREFACE BY 

THE REV. WILLIAM WHEWELL, M. A. 
In one neat 8vo. vol., extra cloth. 

OVERLAND JOURNEY ROUND THE WORLD, 

DURING THE YEARS 1841 AND 1842, 
BY SIR GEORGE SIMPSON, 

GOVERNOR-IN-CmCF OF THE miDSON'S BAY COMP.VN'Y'S TERRITORIES. 

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LEA AND BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 

UNITED STATES EXPLOR ING EXPEDITION. 

THE NARRATIVE OP THE 

UNITED STATES EXPLORING EXPEDITION, 

DURING THE YEARS 1838, '39, '40, 41, AND '42. 
BY GHARIiES AVIIiKKS, KSQ,*) TJ. S. IV. 

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SCHOOL and other PITBLIC LIBRAKIKS should not be without it. as embodying tlie results of 
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JUST ISSUED, 

THE ETHNOGRAPHY AND PHILOLOGY OF THE UNITED 
STATES EXPLORING EXPEDITION, 

UNDER THE COMMAND OF CHARLES WILKES, ESQ., U. S. NAVY. 
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philologist to the expedition. 

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•»* This is the only edition printed, and but few are offered for sale. 

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LEA AND BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 

DON QUIXOTE-ILLUSTRATED EDITION. 

NEARLY READY. 



DON QUIXOTE DE LA MANCHA, 

TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH OP 

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA 

BV CHARLES JARVXS, ESQ. 

CAREFULLY REVISED AND CORRECTED, WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR AND 
NOTICE OF HIS WORKS. 

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS, 

BY TONY JOHANNOT, 
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The publishers are happy in presenting; to the admirers of Don Quixote an edition of that work 
in some degree worthy of its reputation and popularity. I'he want of such a one has long been felt 
in this country, and in presenting tliis, they have only to express their hope that it may meet the 
numerous demands and inquiries. The translation is that by Jarvis, which is acknowledged supe- 
rior in both force and fidelity to all others. It has in some few instances been slightly altered to adapt 
it better to modem readers, or occasionally to suit it to the inimita!)le designs of Tony Johannot. 
These latter are admitted to be the only successful pictorial exponents of the wit and humor ot 
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LEA AND BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 

PICCIOLA. 

ILLUSTRATED EDITION. 

PICCIOLA, THE PRISONER OF FENESTRELLA; 

OR, CAPTIVITY CAPTIVE. 
BY X. B. SAINTINE. 

A NEW EDITION, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. 

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" Perhaps the most beautiful and touching work of fiction ever wiitten, with the exception of 
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Paul and Virginia, and we believe it is destined to surpass that popular work of St. Pierre in popu- 
larity. It is better suited to the advanced ideas of the present age, and po.ssesses peculiar moral 
charms in which Paul and Virginia is deficient. St. Pierre's work derived its popularity i^om its 
bold attack on feudal prejudices; Saintine's strikes deeper, and assiuls the secret infidelity which 
is the bane of modern society, in its stronghold. A thousand editions of Picciola will not be too 
many for its merit." — Lady's Book. 

" This IS a little gem of its kind — a beautiful conceit, beautifully unfolded and applied. The style 
and plot of this truly charming story require no criticism ; we will only express the wish that those 
who rely on works of fiction for their intellectual food, may always fuid those as pixe in language 
and beautiful in moral as Picciola." — iVew York Review. 

" The present edition is got up in beautiful style, with illustrations, and reflects credit upon the 
publishers. We recommend to those of our readers who were not fortunate enough to meet with 
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portunity of supplying themselves from the present very excellent edition." — Saturday Evening Post. 

"A new edition of this exquisite story has recently been issued by Messrs. Lea <fc Blanchard, 
embellished and illustrated in tlie most elegant manner. We understand that the work was com- 
pletely out of print, and a new edition will then be welcomed, it contains a dehghtful letter from 
the author, giving a painful insight into the personal history of the characters who figure in the 
story." — Evening Bulletin. 

" The most charming work we have read for many a day." — JUchmond Enquirer. 

LOVER'S RORY O'MORE. 

RORTT O'laORE-ik XTilTXOM'AZi ROMAZTCE, 

BY SAMUEL LOVER. 
A new and cheap edition, with Illustrations by the Author. Price only 25 cents. 
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"A truly Irish, national, and characteristic story." — London Literary Gazette. 
"Mr. Lover has here produced his best work of fiction, which will survive when half the Irish 
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adventures of Kory is never ouce sufl'ered to abate. We welcome liun with Ingh delight, and 
part from him with regret." — London Sun. 

LOVER'S IRISH STORIES. 



IiZiGSITDS .A.XTD STORISS OF XRX:i:i,A.ITD, 

BY SAMUEL LOVER. 

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OR THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN AND SOLDIER,^ 

BY THE REV. GEORGE GROLY, 
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LEA AND BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 

BIOGRAPHY AND POETICAL REMAINS 

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XI£AILaAS.ltT XaiZiIjER DAVXSSOXI'. 

BY WASHINGTON IRVING. 

A NEW EDITION, REVISED. 

POETICAL REMAINS 

OF THE LATE 

ZiVCRSTZil JSIA^IA. DiiVIDSOIT. 

COLLECTED AND ARRANGED BY HER MOTHER, WITH A BIOGRAPHY BY 

MISS SEDGWICK. 

A NEW EDITION, REVISED. 

SELECTIONS FROM THE 

WRITINGS OF MRS. MARGARET M. DAVIDSON, 

THE MOTHER OF LUCRETIA AND MARGARET. 

WITH A PREFACE BY MISS SEDGWICK. 
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THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS, 

WITH ILLUSTRATIVE POETRY; TO WHICH ARE NOW ADDED THE 
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SEVENTH AMERICAN, FROM THE NINTH LONDON EDITION. 

Revised by the Editor of the " Forget-Me-Not." 
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CAMPBELL'S POETICAL WORKS, 

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ESSAY ON HIS GENIUS BY JEFFREY. 

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KEBLE'S CHRISTIAN YEAR, 

EDITED BY THE RIGHT REV. BISHOP DOANE. 

Miniature Edition, in 32mo., extra cloth, virith Wuminated Title. 

RELIGIO MEDICI, ANO ITS SEQUEL, CHRISTIAN MORALS, 

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ooopziR's i.£:athi:r stockzn-g taZiES^ 

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LEA AND BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 

BOY'S TREA SURY OF SPORTS. 

THE BOY'S TREASURY OF SPORTS. PASTIMES AND RECREATIONS. 

WITH FOUR HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS, 
B7 SAIVEUEL X^IIil. lAIVIS. 

IS NOW KSADY. 

In one very neat volume, bound in extra crimson cloth; handsomely printed and 

illustrated with engravings in the first style of art, and containing 

about six hundred and fifty articles. A present for all seasons. 




PREFACE. 

This illustratecl Manual of" Sports, Pastimes, and Recreations," has been prepared with especial 
regard to the Health, Exercise, and Rational Enjoj-ment of the young readers to whom it is ad- 
dressed. 

Every variety of commendable Recreation will be found in the foUowins pages. First, you havo 
the little Toys of the Nursery; the Tops and Marbles of the Play-ground ; and the Balls of the 
Play-room, or the smooth Lawn. 

Then, you have a number of Pastimes that serve to gladden the fireside ; to light up many faces 
right joyfully, and make the parlour re-echo with mirth. 

Next, come the Exercising Sports of the Field, the Green, and the Play-ground; followed by 
the noble and truly English eame of Cricket. 

Gymnastics are next admitted; then, the delightful recreation of Swimming ; and the healthful 
sport of Skating. 

Archery, once the pride of England, is then detailed ; and very properly followed by Instructions 
in the graceful accomphshment of Fencing, and the manly and enlivening exercise of Riding. 

Angling, the pastime of childhood, boyhood, manhood, and old age, is next described ; and by 
attention to the instructions here laid down, the lad with a stick and a string may soon become an 
expert Angler. 

Keeping Animals is a favourite pursuit of boyhood. Accordingly, we have described how to rear 
the Rabbit, the Squirrel, the Dormouse, the Guinea Pig, the Pigeon, and the Silkworm. A long 
chapter is adapted to the rearing of Song Birds ; the several varieties of which, and their respective 
cages, are next described. And here we may hint, that kindness to Animals invariably denotes an 
excellent disposition ; for, to vet a little creature one hour, and to treat it hai-shly the next, marks 
a capricious if not a cruel temper. Humaiuty is a jewel, which every boy should be proud to wear 
in his breast. 

We now approach the more sedate amusements — as Draughts and Chess : two of the noblest 
exercises of the ingenuity of the human mind. Dominoes and Bagatelle follow. With a know- 
ledge of these four games, who would pass a dull hour in the dieariest day of winter ; or who 
would sit idly by the fire f 

Amusements in Arithmetic, harmless Legerdemain, or sleight-of-hand, and Tricks with Cards, 
will deliglit many a famUy circle, when the business of the day is over, and the book is laid aside. 

Although the present volume is a bonk of amusements. Science has not been excluded from its 
pages. And why should it be ? when Science is as entertaining as a fairy tale. The chaiiges we 
read of in httle nursery-books are not more amusing than the changes in Chemistry, Optics, Elec- 
tricity, Magnetism, <tc. By understanding these, you may almost become a little Magician. 

Toy Balloons and Paper Fireworks, (or Fireworks withnul. Fire.) come next. Then follow In- 
structions for Mooeihng in Card-Board ; so that you may huUd for yourself a palace or a carriage, 
and, in short, make for yourself a lUtle paper world. 

Puzzles and Paradoxes, Enigmas and Kiddtes, and Talking with the Fingers, next make up plenty 
of exercise for *' Guess," and " Guess again." And as you have the " Keys" in your own hand, yoa 
may keep your friends in suspense, and make yourself as mysterious as the Sphynx 

A chapter of Miscellanies — useful and amusing secrets — winds up the volume. 

The "Treasury" contains upwards ol four hundred Engravings ; so that it is not only a collection 
of " secrets wortli knowuig," but it is a book of pictures, as full of prints as a Christmas pudding 
is of plums. 

It maybe as well to mention that the "Treasury" holds many new games that have never 
before been printed in a book of this kind. The old games have been described afresh. Thus it 
is, altogether, a new book. 

And now we take leave, wishing you many hours, and days, and weeks of enjoyment over theM 
pages ; and we hope that you may be as happy as this book is brirafui of amusement. 



LEA AND BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 

YOUATT AND SKINNER'S 

STANDARD WORK ON THE HORSE. 



THE HORSE. 

BY WILLIAM YOUATT. 

A NEW EDITION, WITH NOMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS. 

TOGETHER WITH A 

GENERAI. HZSTOH7 OF THE HORSE; 

A DISSERTATION ON 

THE AMERICAN TROTTING HORSE; 

HOW TRAINED AND JOCKEYED. 

AN ACCOUNT OF HIS REMARKABLE PERFORMANCES; 

AND 

AW ESSAY ON THE ASS A2TD THE Z/STTZjE, 

BY J. S. SKINNER, 

Assistant Post-JIaster-General, and Editor of the Turf Register. 

This edition of Youatt's well-known and standard work on the Manage- 
ment, Diseases, and Treatinent of the Horse, has already obtained such a 
wide circulation throughout the country, that the Publishers need say no- 
thing to attract to it the attention and confidence of all who keep Horses or 
are interested in their improvement. 

"In introducing this very neat edition of Youatt's well-known book, on 'The Horse,' to our 
readers, it is not necessary, even if we had time, to say anything to convince them of its worth ; it 
has been highly spoken of, by those most capable of appreciating its merits, and its appearance 
Tinder the patronage of the 'Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge,' with Lord Brougham 
at its head, affords a full guaranty for its high character. The book is a very valuable one, and we 
endorse the recommendation of the editor, that every man wlio owns the 'hair of a horse,' should 
have it at his elbow, to be consulted like a family physician, ' for mitigating the disorders, and pro- 
longing the life of the most interesting and useful of all domestic animals.' " — Farmer's Cabinet. 

" This celebrated work has been completely revised, and much of it almost entirely re- written 
by its able author, who, from bemg a practical veterinary surgeon, and withal a gieat lover and 
excellent judge of the animal, is particularly well qualified to write the history of the noblest of 
quadrupeds. Messrs. Lea and Blanchard of Philadelphia have republished tlie above work, omitting 
a few of the first pages, and have supplied their place with matter quite as valuable, and perhaps 
more interesting to the reader in this countiy ; it being nearly 100 pages of a general history of t'ne 
horse, a dissertation on the American trotting horse, how trained and jockeyed, an account of his 
remarkable performances, and an essay on the Ass and Mule, by J. S. Skinner, Esq., Assistant Post- 
aiaster-General, and late editor of the Turf Register and American Fanner. Mr. Skinner is one 
of our most pleasing writers, and has been familiar with the subject of the horse from childhood, 
and we need not add that he has acquitted himself well of the task. He also takes up the import- 
ant subject, to the American breeder, of the Ass, and the Mule. This he treats at length and cMi 
amore. The Pluladelphia edition of the Horse is a handsome octavo, with numerous wood-cuts."— 
American Agriculturist. 



LEA AND BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 



YOUATT ON THE PIG. 



T5£S PIG; 

A TREATISE ON THE BREEDS, MANAGEMENT, FEEDING, 
AND MEDICAL TREATMENT OF SWINE, 

WITH DIKECTIONS FOR SALTING POKK, AND CURING BACON AND HAMS. 

BY WILLIAM YOUATT, V.S. 

Author of " The Horse," " Tlie Dog," " Cattle," " Sheep," &c., &c 

ILLUSTBATED WITH ENGRAVINGS DRAWN FROM LIFE BY WILUAM HARVEY. 

In one handsome duodecimo volume, extra cloth, or in neat paper cover, price 50 cents. 
This work, on a subject comparatively neglected, must prove of much use to farmers, especially 
in this country, vi'here the Pig is an animal of more importance than elsewhere. No vpork has 
hitherto appeared treating fully of the various breeds of swine, their diseases and cure, breeding, 
fattening, &c., and the preparation of bacon, salt pork, hams. &c., wliile the name of the autlior of 
" The Horse," " The Cattle Doctor," Sec, is sufficient authority for all he may state. To render it 
more accessible to those whom it particularly interests, the publisliers have prepared copies in 
neat illustrated paper covers, suitable for transmission by mail ; and wliich will be sent through 
the post-office on the receipt of fifty cents, free of postage. 

CLATER AND YOUATT'S CATTLE DOCTOR. 



EVERY MAN HIS OWN CATTLE DOCTOR: 

CONTAINING THE CAUSES, SYMPTOMS AND TREATMENT OP ALL 

DISEASES INCIDENT TO OXEN, SHEEP AND SWINE; 

AND A SEETCH OF THE 

ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF NEAT CATTLE. 

BY FRANCIS CLATER. 

EDITED, REVISED AND ALMOST RE-WRITTEN, BT 

WILLIAM YOUATT, AUTHOR OF "THE HORSE.". 

WITH NUMEROUS ADDITIONS, 
EMBRACING AN ESSAY ON THE USE OF OXEN AND THE IMPROVEMENT IN THE 
BREED OF SHEEP, 
BY J. S. SKINNER. 
WITH NUMEROUS CUTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
In one 12nio. volume, cloth. 
"As its title would import, it is a most valuable work, and should be in the hands of every Ame- 
rican fiuTner; and we feel proud in saying, that the value of the work has been greatly enhanced 
tij the contributions of Mr. Skinner. Clater and Youatt are names treasured by the farming com- 
munities of Europe as household-gods ; nor does that of Skinner deserve to be less esteemed in 
Maeiica."— American Farmer. 



CLATER'S FARRIER. 



EVERY MAN HIS OWN FARRIER: 

CONTAINING THE CAUSES, SYMPTOMS, AND MOST APPROVED METHODS OF CURE 
OF THE DISEASES OF HORSES. 

BIT THANCZS CI.AT1III, 

Author of " Every Man his own Cattle Doctor," 

AND HIS SON, JOHN CLATER, 

FIRST AMERICAN FROJI THE TWENTY-EIGHTH LONDON EDITION. 
WITH NOTES AND ADDITIONS, 

BV J. S. SKIXTNBR. 

In one 12mo. volume, cloth. 



LEA AND BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 

HAWKER AND P ORTER ON SHOOTING. 

INSTRUCTIONS TO YOUNG SPORTS3IEN 

IN ALL THAT RELATES TO GUNS AND SHOOTING. 
BY LIEUT. COL. P. HA^WKER. 

FROM THE KNLARUEn AND IMPROVED NINTH LONDON EIHTIOy, 

TO WHICH IS AnDKD THE HTINTING AND SHOOTING OF NORTH AMERICA, WITH 

DESCRIPTIONS OF ANLMAIS AND BIRDS, CAREFULLY COLUVTED 

FROiM AUTHENTIC SGUIiCES. 

BY AV. T. PORTER, ESQ,* 

EDITOR OF THE N. Y. BrIRIT OF THE TIMES. 

In one large octavo volume, rich extra cloth, with rmiiierous Illustrations. 

" Here is a bonk, a hand-botik, or rather a text-hook — one that contains the whole routine of the 
science. It is the Friiiier, IIik Le.xiooii, and the Homer. Everythmi;: is here, from the minutest 
portion of a pun-lock, to a iIcmO Butfalo. The .sportsman who reads this hook understanding!)', may 
pass an pxainiiiation. Hi; will know the science, and may (five advice to others. Every sportsman, 
and sportsmen are plentil'iil, should own this work. It should he a " vade mecum." He should 
be examined on ils coiilenLs, and esiiinated by his abilities to answer. We have not been without 
treatises on the art, but hitherto they have not descended into all the minutiae of equipments and 
qualifications to proceed to the completion. This work supplies deticicncics, and completes the 
sportsman's library." — U. S. Gazette. 

" No man in the country that we wot of is so well calculated as our friend of the ' Spirit' for tha 
tn.sk he has undertaken, and the result of his labours has been ttrat he has turned out a work which 
should be in the hands of every man in the land who ovms a double-barrelled gun." — N. O. Picayune. 

"A volume .splendidly printed and bound, and embellished with numerous beautiful cn^ravinf^, 
which will doubtless be in irreHt demand. No sportsman, indeed, ought to be without it, while the 
general reader will find in ils pages a fund of curious and useful information." — Kichmtmd Whij/. 



7KS DOG, 

BY WILLIAM Y O U A T T, 

Author of " The Horse," ic. 

WITH NUMEROUS AND BEAUTIFUL ILLUSTRATIONS. 

EDITED BY E. J. LEWIS, M. D. &c. &c. 

In one beautifully printed volume, crown octavo. 

LIST OF PLATES. 

Head of Bloodhound — Ancient Greyhounds — The Thibei Dog — The Dinfro, or New Holland Doef— 

The Danish or Dalmatian Dog — The Hare Indian Pog — The Grevhoiind — The Grecian Greyhound 

— Blenheims and Cockers — The Water Spaniel — Tlie Poodle — The Alpine Spaniel or Bernardine 

Ikig — The Newfoundland Dog — The Esquimaux Dog — The English Sheep Dog — The Scotch Sheep 

Dog — The Beagle — The Harrier — The I'oxhouiid — Plan of Goodwood Kennel — The Southern 

Hound— The Setter— The Pointer- The Bull Dog— Tne Slastiff— Tlie Terrier— Skeleton of the 

Dog — ^Teeth of tlie Dog at seven diii'erent ages. 

" Mr. Youal t's work is invaluable to the student of canine history ; it is full of entertaining anJ 
instructive matter fur the general reader. To the sportsman it commends itself by the large amount 
of useful informtition in reference to his peculiar pursuits which it embodies — iaformation wldeh 
he cannot find ebsewliere in so convenient and accessible a form, and with so rehable an authority 
to entitle it to liis consideration. The modest prelace which Dr. Lewis has made to tlie American 
edition of this work scarcely does justice to the additional value he has imparted to it; and the 
publishers are entitled to great credit for tlie liaudsome maimer in wliich tliey have got it up."— 
North American. 

, THE SFOnTSm^IT'S I.IS HiV.R-Sr, 

OR HINTS ON HUNTERS, HUNTING, HOUNDS, SHOOTLNG, GA.ME, DOGS, GUNS, 

FlSlUNG, COURSING, ic, &x. 

BY JOHN MILLS, ESQ., 

Author of "The Old English Genlkman," ic. 

In one well jirintcd royal duodecimo voliinie, extra cloth. 

STiLBZiE TALK AITD T A B^LB^ T A L K , 

OR SPECTACLES FOR YOUNG SPORTS.ME.V. 

BY HARRY HIEOVER. 

In one very neat duodecimo volume, extra cloth. 

"These lively sketches answer to their title very well. Vriierever Nimrod is welcome, there 

should be cordial greeting for Harry Hieover. His book is a very clever one, and contains many 

instructive liints, as well as much light-hearted reading." — Examiner. 

THE DOG AiND THE SPOHTSMAIT, 

EMBRACING THE r.sKS, BREEniNG. TRAINING, DISEASES, ETC., OF DOGS AND AN 

ACCOUNT OF TIIF DIFFERENT KINDS OF GAME, WITH THEIR HABITS. 

Also, Hints to SUooters, ivith varions useful Recipes, &c., &c« 

BY J. S. SKINNER. 

With Plates. In one very neat 12mo. volume, vctra clt-th. 



LEA AND BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 

FRANCATELLI'S P^O DERN FRENCH COOKERY. 

THE BIODEKN COOK, 

A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO THE CULINARY ART, IN ALL ITS BRANCHES, ADAPTED AS 

WELL FOR THE LARGEST ESTABLISHJIENTS AS FOR THE USE 

OF PRIVATE FAIULIES. 

BY CHARLES ELME FRANCATELLI, 

Papilof the celebrated Carerae, and late Slaitre D'Hotel and Chief Cook to her Majesty the Queen. 
In one large octavo volume, extra cloth, with numerous illustrations. 

"It appears to he the book of books on cookery, hein? a most comprehensive treatise on that ,nrt 
preservative and conservative. Tlie work comprises, in one lar?e and elegant octavo volume. 1447 
recipes for cooking dishes and desserts, with numerous illustrations; also bills of fare and direc- 
tions for dinners for every month in the year, for companies of six persons to twenty-eight. — Nat. 
Intelligencer. 

"The ladies who read our Magazine, will thank us for calhn^ attention to this great work on the 
noble science of cooking, in which everybody, who has any taste, feels a deep anil abiding interest. 
Francatelli is the Plato, the Shakspeare, or the Napoleon of liis department; or perhaps the La 
Place, for his performance beare the same relation to ordinaiy cook hooks that the Jlecanique 
Celeste does to DaboU's Arithmetic. It is a large octavo, profusely illustrated, and contains every- 
thing on the pliilosophy of making dinners, suppers, etc. , that is worth knowing. — Graluan's Magazute. 

ImTAnwsj^ 

ZlZODBHZT COOKEB'Sr IN iHiX. ITS SHANCJIIIS, 

REDUCED TO A SYSTEM OF EASY PRACTICE. FOR THE USE OF PRIVATE FAMILIES. 

IN A SERIES OF PRACTICAL RECEIPTS, ALL OF WHICH ARE GIVEN 

WITH THE MOST MINUTE EXACTNESS. 

BY KlilZA ACTON. 

WITH NUMEROUS WOOD-CUT ILLUSTRATIONS. 
TO WHICH IS ADDED, A TABLE OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. 

THE WHOLE REVISED AND PREPAKED FOR AMERICAN HOUSEKEEPERS. 

BY MRS. SARAH J. HALE. 

From the Second London Edition. In one large 12mo. volume. 

"Miss Eliza Acton may congratulate herself on having composed a work of great utility, and one 
that is speedily finding its way to eveiy ' dresser' in the kingdom. Her Cookery-bouk :s unques- 
tionably the most valuable compendium of the art that has yet been published. It strongly incul- 
cates economical principles, and points out how good tilings may be concocted without that reck- 
less extravagance which good cooks have been wont to imagine the best evidence they can give of 
skill in their profession." — London Morning Post. 

niiiTo ¥pLET Fc?o^ 

PLAIN AND PRACTICAL DIRECTIONS FOR COOKINB AND HOUSEKEEPING, 

■WITH UP\IO"ARDS OF SEVEN HUNDRED RECEIPTS, 

Consisting of Directions for the Choice of Meat and Poultry, Preparations for Cooking; Making of 

Broths and Soups ; Boihng, Roasting, Baking and Frying of Meats, Fish, ic. ; Seasonings, 

Colorings, Cooking Vegetables; Preparing Salads ; Clarifying; Making of Pastry, 

Puddings, Gruels, Gravies, Garnishes, <tc., <tc., and with general 

Directions for making Wines. • 

WITH ADDITIONS AND ALTERATIONS. 
BY J. M. SANDERSON, 

OF THE FRANKLIN HOUSE. 

In one small volume, paper. Price only Twenty-five Cents. 

THE co?^ple7e"confeSiMrJ1a^^ baker. 

PLAIN AND PRACTICAL DIRECTIONS 

FOR MAKING CONFECTIONARY AND PASTRY, AND FOR BAKING. 

V7ITH UPVtTARES OF FIVE HUNDRED RECEIPTS, 

Consisting of Directions for malcing all sorts of Preserves, Sugar Boiling, Comfits, Lozenges, 

Ornamentiil Cakes, Ices, Liqueurs, Waters. Gum Paste Ornaments, Syrups, Jellies, 

Jlarmalades, Compotes, Bread Baking, Artificial Yeasts, Fancy 

Biscuits, Cakes, Rolls, Muffins, Tarts, Pies, <tc., <tc. 

WITH ADDITIONS AND ALTERATIONS. 

BY PARKINSON, 

PRACTICAL CONFECTIONER, CHESTNUT STREET. 

In one small volume, paper. Price oidy Twenty-five Cent*. 



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MILLIARD ON REAL ESTATE. 

NOW READY. 



THE ASMEERXCAN X.A^^ OP HEAZ. PROPERTY. 

SECOND EDITION, REVISED, CORRECTED, AND ENLARGED. 

BY FRANCIS HILLIARD, 

CODNSELLOR AT LAW. 

In two large octavo volumes, beautifully printed, and bound in best law sheep. 

This book is designed as a substitute for Cruise's Digest, occupying the 
bame ground in American law wliich that work has long covered in the 
liinglisli law. It embraces all that portion of the English Law of Real 
Estate which has any applicability in this country ; and at the same time it 
embodies the statutory provisions and adjudged cases of all the States upon 
the same subject ; thereby constituting a complete elementary treatise for 
American students and practitioners. The plan of the work is such as to 
render it equally valuable in all the States, embracing, as it does, the pecu- 
liar modifications of the law alike in Massachusetts and Missouri, New 
York and Mississippi. In this edition, the statutes and decisions subse- 
quent to the former one, which are very numerous, have all been incorpo- 
rated, thus making it one-third larger than the original work, and bringing 
the view of the law upon the subject treated quite down to the present time. 
The book is recommended in the highest terms by dfstinguished jurists of 
different Stales, as will be seen by the subjoined extracts. 

" The work before us supplies this deficiency in a highly satisfactory manner. It is beyond all 
qnestion the best work of the kind that we now have, and although we doubt whether this or any 
other work will be likely to supplant Cruise's Digest, we do not hesitate to say, that of the two, 
this is the more valuable to the American lawyer. We congratulate the author upon the success- 
ful accomplishment of the arduous task he undertook, in reducing the vast body of the American 
Lerfi of Real Property to 'portable size,' and we do not doubt that his labours will be duly appre- 
ciated by the profession." — Law Reporter, Aug., 1&I6. 

Judge Story saj-s : — "I think the work a very valuable addition to our present stock of juridical 
literature. It embraces all that part of Mr. Cruise's Digest wliich is most useful to American law- 
yers. But its higher value is, that it presents in a concise, but clear and exact form, the substance 
of American Law on the same subject. 1 know no work that we possess, whose practical utility is 
likely to he so extensively fell." " The wonder is, that the author has been able to bring so great a 
mass into so condensed a text, at once comprehensive and lucid." 

Chancellor Kent says of the work (Commentaries, vol. iL, p. 635, note, 5th edition) : — " It is a work 
of great labour and intrinsic value." 

Hon. Rufus Chonte savs : — " Jlr. Hilliard's work has been for three or four years in use, and 1 
think that Mr. Justice Story and Chancellor Kent e.xpress the general opinion of the Massachusetts 
Bar." 

Professor Gre snleaf says :— " I had already found the first edition a very convenient book of refe- 
rence, and do not doubt, from the appearance of the second, that it is greatly improved." 

Professor J. H. Townsend, of Yale College, says : — 

" I have been acquainted for several years with the first edition of Mr. Hilliard's Treatise, and 
have formed a very favourable opinion of it. 1 have no doubt the second edition wiU be found even 
more valuable than the first, and I shall be happy to recommend it as I may l\%\e opportunity. I 
know of no other work on the subject of Real Estate, so comprehensive and so weil adapted to the 
itate of the law in this country.'' 



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ADDISON ON CONTRACTS. 



A TREATISX: OST TKE ZiA"^^ OF CONTRACTS AXTD 
RIGHTS AND I.XABIX.ITZSS UK CONTRACTU. 

BY C. G. ADDISON, ESQ., 

Of the Inner Temple, Barrister at Law. 
In one volume, octavo, handsomely bound in law sheep. 

In this treatise upon the most constantly and frequently administered 
branch of law, the author has collected, arranged and developed in an intel- 
ligible and popular form, the rules and principles of the Law of Contracts, 
and has supported, illustrated or exemplified them by references to nearly 
four thousand adjudged cases. It comprises the Rights and Liabilities of 
Seller and Purchaser ; Landlord and Tenant ; Letter and Hirer of Chattels ; 
Borrower and Lender ; Workman and Employer ; Master, Servant and Ap- 
prentice ; Principal, Agent and Surety; Husband and Wife; Partners; 
Joint Stock Companies ; Corporations ; Trustees ; Provisional Committee- 
men; Shipowners; Shipmasters; Innkeepers; Carriers; Infants; Luna- 
tics, &c. 

WHEATON'S INTERNATIONAL LAW. 



ELSMBNTS OP INTERN ATIONAL ZiA^OT. 

BY HENRY WHEATON, LL.D., 

Minister of the United States at the Court of Russia, <5:c. 

TfflRD EDITION, REVISED AND CORRECTED. 

In one large and beautiful octavo volume of C50 pages, extra cloth, or fine law sheep. 

" Mr. Wheaton's work is indispensable to every diplomatist, statesman and lawyer, and necessary 
indeed to all public men. To every philosophic and liberal mind, the study must be an attractive 
and in the hands of our author it is a delightful one."— North American. 



HILL ON TRUSTEES. 



A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON THE LAW RELATING TO TRUSTEES, 

THEIR POWERS, DUTIES, PRIVILEGES AND LIABILITIES. 

BY JAMES HILL, ESQ., 

Of the Iimer Temple, Barrister at Law. 

EDITED BY FRANCIS J. TROUBAT, 

Of the Philadelphia Ear. 

Ill one large octavo volume, best law sheep, raised bands. 

" Tlie editor begs leave to iterate the obsen-ation made by the author that the work is intended 
principally for the instruction and guidance of trustees. That single feature very much enhance* 
lis practical value." 

ON THE PRINCIPLES OF CRIiVilNAL LAW. 

In one 18mo. volume, paper, price 25 cents. 
KEING PART 10, OF "SMALL BOOKS ON GREAT SUBJECTS" 



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SPENCB'S EQVIT-S- JX7I&ISI>ICTZOXr. 



THE EDITABLE JURISDICTION OF THE COURT OF CHANCER^ 

COMPRISINGr 

ITS RISE, PROGRESS AND FINAL ESTABLISHMENT. 

TO wancH IS prehxed. with a \nE\v to the elucidation of the main sub. 

JEGT, A CON'CISE ACCOUNT OF THE LEADING DOCTRINES OF THE COMMON 
LAW. AND OF THE COURSE OF PROCEDURE IN THE COURTS OF COM- 
MON LAW. WITH REGARD 'lO CIVIL RIGHTS; WTIH AN ATTEMPT 
TO TRACE THEM TO THEIR SOURCES; AN'D IN WiUCH 
THE V.AKIOUS ALTERATIONS MADE BY TILE 
LEGISLATURE DOWTSI TO THE PRESENT 
DAY ARE NOTICED. 

BY GEOKGE SPENCE, ESQ., 

One of licr Majesty's CouiiseL 

IN TWO OCTAVO VOLUMES. 

Volume I., emhradns; the Principles, is now reaily. Volume II. is rapiilly preparing and will 
apiJear eurly lu J818. It is based upon the worlc of Mr. Maddock, brought down to the present 
tune, and embracmg so much of the practice as counsel are called on to advise upon. 

A Nnvr LA-W DICTIOXrAZHr, 

CONTArNING EXPLANATIO.VS OF SUCH TECHNICAL TERMS AND PHRASES AS OCCUP 

IN THE VN'OKKS OF LEGAL AUTHORS, IN THE PRACTICE OF THE COURTS, 

AND IN THE PARLIAMENTARY PROCEEDINGS OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS 

AND COJIMONS, TO WHICH IS ADDED, AN OUTLINE OF AN 

ACTION AT LAW AND OF A SUIT IN EQUITY. 

BY HENRY JA3VTES HOLTHOUSEjESQ., 

Of the Inner Temple, Special Pleader. 
EDITED FROM THE SECOND AND ENLARGED LONDON EDITION, 

WITH NUMEROUS ADDITIONS, 

BY HENRY PENINGTON, 

Of the Philadelphia Ear. 

In one large volume, royal 12nio., of almut 500 pages, double columns, handsomely 

bound in law sheep. 

" This is a considerable improvement upon the former editions, being bound with the usual law 

binding, and the general execuiiou admirable — the paper excellent, and the printing clear and 

beautiful. Its peculiar usefulness, however, consists in the valuable additions above referred to, 

being intelligible and well devised definitions of such phrases and technicalitios as are pecuUar to 

the practice in the Courts of this country. — Wliile, tiierefore, we recommend it especially to the 

students of law, as a safe suide Ihroush [he intricacies of their study, it will nevertheless be found 

a valuable acijuisition to the library of the practitioner himself." — Alex. Gazette. 

" This work is intended rather for the general student, than as a substitute for many abridgments, 
digests, and dictionaries in use by the professional man. Irs object principally is to impress accu- 
rately and distinctly upon the mind the meaning of the technical terms of the law, and as such 
can li;u"dly fail to be generally useful. There is much curious information to be found in it in re- 
gard to the peculiarities of the ancient Saxon law. Tlie additions of the American edition give 
increased value to the work, and evince much accuracy and care." — Pennsylvania Law Journal. 

TATTLOS'S £a:i3BlCAZ. JTIRISPaXTDEITCS. 
A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE. 

BY ALFRED S. TAYLOR, 

Lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence and Chemistry at Guy's Hospital, London. 

With numerous Notes and Additions, and References to American Law, 

BY R. E. GRIFFITH, M.D. 

In one volume, octavo, neat law sheep. 

TAVLOR'S I/TAEfTJAZ. OP TOXICOI.OGTr. 

IN ONE NEAT OCTAVO VOLUME. 

A NEW WOEK, NOW BE.^DY. 

Tii.a.xi:.i:.'s 

OUTLINES OF A COURSE OF I.KCTUnES ON MEDICAL JIJEISPRUDENCB. 

IN ONP SMALL OCTAVO VOLUME. 



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nupoHTs or CASES 

ADJUDGED AND DETERMINED IN THE COURT 
OF KING'S BENCH. 

WITH TABLES OF THE NAMES OF THE CASES AND PRINCIPAL MATTERS. 

BY ED'WARD HYDE EAST, ESQ., 

Of the Inner Temple, Barrister at Law. 

EDITED, WITH NOTES AND REFERENCES, 

BY G. M. WHARTOir, ESQ., 

Of the PhihidKlphia Bar. 

In eight large royal octavo volumes, bound in best law sheep, raised bands and double 
titles. Price, to subscribers, only twenty-five dollars. 

In this edition of East, the sixteen volumes of the former edition have 
been compressed into eight — two volumes in one throughout — but nothing 
has been omitted ; the entire work will be found, with the notes of Mr. 
Wharton added to those of Mr. Day. The great reduction of price, (from 
$72, the price of the last edition, to $25, the subscription price of this,) 
together with the improvement in appearance, will, it is trusted, procure for 
it a ready sale. 

A NEW WORK ON COURTS-MARTIAL 



A TREATISE ON AMERICAN MILITARY LAW, 

AND THE 

PRACTICE OF COURTS-MARTIAL, 

WITH SUGGESTIONS FOR THEIR IMPROVEMENT. 
BY JOHN O'BRIEN, 

LIEUTENANT CNITED STATES ARTILLERY. 

In one octavo volume, extra cloth, or law sheep. 

"This work stamls relatively to American Military Law in the same position that Blackstone'g 
Commentaries stand to Common Law." — U. S. Gazette. 

CAP/iPBELL'S LORD CHANCELLORS. 



LIVES OF THE LORD CHANCELLORS AND KEEPERS OF 
THE GREAT SEAL OF ENGLAND, 

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE REIGN OF KING GEORGE IV., 

BY JOHN LORD CAMPBELL, A.M., F.R.S.E. 

FIRST SERXE S, 

In three neat demy octavo volumes, extra cloth, 

BRDVGING THE WORK TO THE TIME OF J.OIE3 H., TOST ISSUED. 

PR EP AR INa, 
SECOND SERIES, 

In four volumes, to match, 
CONTAINING FROM J.\MFS 11. TO GEORGE lY. 



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SCHOOL BOOKS. 



SCHMITZ AND ZUMPT'S CLASSICAL SERIES. 

VOIiUME I. 

C. JUL.II C^SARIS 

COMMENTARII DE HELLO GALLICO. 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND A GEOGRAPHICAL INDEX IN ENGLISH, 

ALSO, A MAP OF GAUL, AND ILLUSTRATIVE ENGRAVINGS. 

In one handsome 18mo. volume, extra cloth. 

This Series has been placed under the editorial management of two eminent scholars 

and practical teachers. Dr. Schmitz, Rector of the High School, Edinburgh, and Dr. 

ZuMPT, Professor in the University of Berlin, and will combine the following advan* 

tages : — 

1. A srailually ascending series of School Books on a uniform plan, so as to constitute within a 
definite number, a complete Latin Curriculum. 

2. Certain arransemp.nts in the rudimentary volumes, which wU insure a fair amount of know- 
ledse in Roman literature to those who are not desiipied for professional life, and who therefore 
Will not require to extend their studies to the advanced portion of tlie series. 

3. The text of each author will be such as has been constituted bv the most recent collations of 
manuscripts, and will be prefaced by biosraphical and critical sketcbes in English, that pupils may 
be made aware of the character and peculiarities of the work they are about to study. 

4. To remove diffioultie.'s, and sustain an interest in the text, explanatory notes in English will 
be placed at the foot of each page, and such oompaiisons drawn as may serve to unite the history 
of the past with the reahties of modern times. 

5. The works, generally, will be embellished with maps and illustrative en^avings,— accompani- 
ments whicli will greatly assist the student's comprehension of the nature of the countries and 
leading circumstanojs described. 

6. The respective volumes will be issued at a price considerably less than that usually charged ; 
and as the texts are from the most eminent sources, and the whole series constructed upon a de- 
terminate plan, the practice of issuing new and altered editions, which is complained of alike by 
teachers and pupils, will be altogether avoided. 

From among the testimonials which the publishers have received, they append the 
following to show that tlie design of the series has been fully and successfully carried 
out ; — 

Central High School, PMla., June 29, 18)7 
Gentlemen : — 

I have been much pleased with your edition of CsRsar's Gallic Wars, being part of Schmitz .ind 
Zumpt's classical series for schools. Tlie work seems happily adapted to the wants of learners. 
The notes contain much valuable information, concisely and accurately expressed, and on the points 
that really require elucidation, wliile at the same time the book is not rendered tiresome and ex- 
pensive by a useless array of mere learning. The text is one in high repute, and your reprint of it 
is pleasing to the eye. 1 take great pleasure in commending the publication to the attention of 
teachers. It will, 1 am persuaded, commend itself to all who give it a fair examination. 

Very Respectfully, Your Obt. Servt., 

JOHN S. HART, 
To Messrs. Lea &. Elanchard. Principal Phila. High SuhooL 



Gentlemen:— June 28, 1847. 

The edition of "Casar's Commentaries," embraced in the Classical Section of Cham.bers's Edu- 
cational Course, and given to the world under the auspices of Drs. Schmitz and Zumnt has re- 
ceived from me a candid examination. I have no hesitation in saying, that the design expressed in 
the notice of the publishers, has been successfully accomplished, and that I lie work is well calcu- 
lated to become popular and useful. The text appears to be unexceptionable. The annotaliona 
emlirace in condensed form such valuable information, as must not only facilitate the research of 
the scholar, but also stimulate to further inquiry, without encouraging indolence. This is an im- 
])ortant feature in the right prosecution of classical studies, which ought to be more generally un- 
derstood and appreciated. H. HAVERSTICK, 

Prof, of Ancient Languages, Central High School, Phila. 



VOtiUME II. 

P. VIRGILII IVIARONIS CARP^IINA, 

NEARLY READY. 



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BIRD'S NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 

NEARLY READY. 



ELEMENTS OF NATURAL. PHILOSOPHY, 

BEING AN EXPERIMENTAL INTRODUCTION TO THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 

ILLnSTRATED WITH OVER THREE HUNDRED WOOD-CUTS, 

BY GOLDING BIRD, M.D., 

Assistant Physician to Guy's Hospital. 

FROM THE THIRD LONDON EDITION. 

In one neat volume. 

"By the appearance of Dr. Bird's work, the student lias now all that he can desire in one neat, 
concise, and vvell-disested volume. The elements (if natural philosophy are explained in very sim- 
ple language, and illustrated by numerous wood-cuts." — Medical Gazette. 



ARNOTT'S PHYSICS. 



ELEMENTS OF PHYSICS; OR, NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, 

GENERAL AND MEDICAL. 

WRITTEN FOR UNIVERSAL USE, IN PLAIN, OR NON-TECHNICAL LANGUAGE. 

BY KIELL ARNOTT, IVI.D. 

A NEW EDITION, BY ISAAC HAYS, M. D. 

Complete in one octavo volume, with nearly two hundred wood-cuts. 

Tliis standard work has been long and favourahly known as one of the best popular expositionas 
of the interesting science it treats of. It is extensively used ni many of the first seminaries. 

ELEMENTARY CHEMiSTRY, THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL 

BY GEORGE FO WNE S, Ph. D., 

Chemical Lecturer in the lliddlesex Hospital Medical School, &c., &c. 

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS. 

EDITED, WITH ADDITIONS, 

BY ROBERT BRIDGES, M. D., 

Professor of General and Pharmaceutical Chemistry in the Philadelphia College of Phai'macy, (tc.,&c. 

SECOND AMERICAN EDITION. 

In one large duodecimo volume, sheep or extra cloth, with nearly two 

hundred wood-cuts. 

The character of this work is such as to recommend it to all colleges and academies in want of a 
text-book. It is fully broni'lit up tn the day, containing all the late views and discoveries that have 
so entirely changed the face of the science, and it is completely illustrated with very numerous 
wood engravings, explanatory of all the different processes and forms of apparatus. Though strictly 
BCientific, it is written with great clearness and simplicity of style, renderijig it easy to be compre- 
hended by those who are commencing the study. 

It may be had well bound in leather, or neatly done up in strong cloth. It^ low price places it 
within the reach of all. 



BREV/STER'S OPTICS. 



EIiEJlH SETTS ©r OPTICS, 

BY SIR DAVID BREWSTER. 

WITH NOTES AND ADDITIONS, BY A. D. BACHE, LL.D. 

Superintendent of the Coast Survey, <tc 
In one volume, 12mo., willi numerous wood-cuts. 



LEA AND BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 



SCHOOL BOOKS. 



BOLMAR'S FRENCH SERIES. 

New editions of the following works, by A. Bolmar, forming, in con- 
nection witli " Bolmar's Levizac," a complete series for the acquisition of 
the French language. 

A SELECTION OF ONE HUNDRED PERRIN'S FABLES, 

ACCOMPANIED BY A KEY, 

Containinjr the text, a literal and free translation, arranged in such a manner as to 

point out the difference between the French and English idiom, &c., in 1vol., 12mo. 

A COLLECTION OF COLLOQUIAL PHRASES, 

ON EVERY TOPIC NECESSARY TO MAINTAIN CONVERSATION, 
Arranged under different heads, with numerous remarks on the peculiar pronunciation 
and uses of various words; the whole so disposed as considerably to facilitate the 
acquisition of a correct pronunciation of the French, in 1 vol., 18ino. 

LES AVENTURES DE TELEMAQUE PAR FENELON, 

In 1 vol., 12mo., accompanied by a Key to the first eight books, in 1 vol., 12mo., con- 
taining, like the Fables, the text, a literal and free translation, intended as a sequel 
to the Fables. Either volume sold separately. 

ALL THE FRENCH VERBS, 

Both regular and irregular, in a small volume. 

nSiLLli^FTiTsTc^T^ 

NEARLY READY. 



PRINCIPLES OF PHYSICS AND METEOROLOGY. 

BY J. MULLER. 

Professor of Physics at the University of Frieburg. 

ILLUSTIUTED WITH NEAJILY FIVE HtlNDRKD AND FIFTJ EI^0RA^^^tG3 Oje WOOD, AND TWO 
COLORED PLATES. 

In one octavo volume. 

Tills Edition is improved by the addition of various articles, and will be found in 
evciy respect brought up to the time of publication. 

" The Physics of Stuller is a work, superb, complete, unique : the greatest want known to Eng- 
lish Science could not have been better supplied. The work is of siirpassin? interest. The value 
of this contribution to the scientific recorils of this country niiiv be duly estimated bv the fact, ttiat 
the cost of the oiigiu.-il drawings and engraviugs alone has exceeded the sum of 2(X)0i" — Lancet, 
March, 1S17. 

AN ATIi/kS or illTCISITT GEOG-R APHY, 

CY SAMUEL BUTLER, D.D., 

Late Lord Bishop of Litchfield, 

CONTAININO TWEKTY-ONE COLOURED MAPS, AND A COMPLETE ACCENTUATED INDEX. 

In one octavo volume, half-bound. 

BUTLER'S AN CIENT GEOGRAPHY. 

GEOGRAPHIC Cl4.ft.SSICA, 

OR, T'^E APPLICATION OF ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY TO THE CLASSICS 

BY SAMUEL BUTLER, D.D., T.E.S. 

REVISED BY HIS SON. 
npTH AMERICAN, FROM THE LAST LONDON EDITION, 

WITH QUESTIONS ON THE MAPS, BY JOHN FROST. 
In one duodecimo volume, half-bound, to match the Atlas. 



LEA AND BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 



SCHOOL BOOKS. 



WHITE'S UNI VERS AL HISTORY. 

LATELY PUBLISHED, 

nitTixaijiNTS oz* irxrzvsnsAZ. hzstorv, 

ON A NEW AND SYSTEMATIC PLAN; 

FKOM THE EAPLrEST TMES TO THE TREATY OF VIENNA; TO WHICH IS ADDED, A 

SUMilARlf OF THE LEADING EVENTS SINCE THAT PERIOD, FOR THE 

USE OF SCHOOLS AND PRIVATE STUDENTS. 

BY H. "ODrHITE, B.A., 

TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 

WITH ADDITIONS AND QUESTIONS, 

BY JOHN S. HART, A.M., 

Principal of the Philadelphia High School, and Professor of Moral and Mental Science, &o., &c. 

In one volume, large duodecimo, neatly bound with Maroon Backs. 

This work is arranged on a new plan, which is believed to combine the 
advantages of those formerly in use. It is divided into three parts, corre- 
sponding with Ancient, Middle, and Modern History ; whicli parts are again 
subdivided into centuries, so that the various events are presented in the 
order of time, while it is so arranged that the annals of each country can be 
read consecutively, thus combining the advantages of both the plans hitherto 
pursued in works of this kind. To guide the researches of the student, 
there will be found numerous synoptical tables, with remarks and sketches 
of literature, antiquities, and manners, at the great chronological epochs. 

The additions of the American editor have been principally confined to 
the chapters on the history of this country. The series of questions by him 
will be found of use to those who prefer that system of instruction. For 
those who do not, the publishers have had an edition prepared without the 
questions. 

This work has already passed through several editions, and has been 
introduced into many of the higher Schools and Academies throughout the 
country. From among numerous recommendations which they have re- 
ceived, the publishers annex the following from the Deputy Superintendent 
of Common Schools for New York : 

Secretary's Office, ) State of New York. 

Department of Common Schools. 5 Albany, Oct. Uth, 1845. 

Messrs. Lea ej- Bkmchard : 

Gentlemen: — I have examined the copy of "White's Universal History," which you were so 
obliging as to send me, and cheerfully and fully concur in the commendations of its value, as a com- 
prehensive and enlightened survey of the Ancient and llodern World which many of the most com- 
petent judges have, as I perceive, already bestowed xipon it. It appears to me to be admirably 
adapted to the purposes of our public schools ; and I unhesitatingly approve of its introduction into 
those seminaries of elementary instruction. Yery respectfully, your obedient servant, 

SAMUEL S. RANDALL, 
Deputy Superintendent Common Schools, 
This work is admira1)ly calculated for District and other hbraries : an edition for that purpose 
without questions has been prepared, done up in strong cloth. 

HERSCHELL'S ASTRONOf/lY. 



A TUSjEkTISS 0£7 JL S T H O XT O ZS 7, 

BY SIR JOHN P. VV. HERSCHELL, F. R. S., &;c. 

WITH NUMEBOltS PLATES AND WOOD-CUTS. 
NEW EDITION, WITH A PREFACE AND A SERIES OF QUESTIONS, 
BY S. C. WALKER. 
In one vobimp, l^ino. 



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